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CHrNA IN OUTLINE, 

AND 

WOMAN 'N CHINA. 



REV. J. T. GRACEY, D. D. 



Copyright 1900. 



^J. T. GRACEY, ' -- 

177 Pearl Street, Rochester, N. Y. 



TKE LtBRAitY Or 
CONGRESS, 

OCT 30 1903 

CnPVWfWT ENTRY 

RI.ASS ^ 5©fc. No. 

% cy 7- 1- C' 
Cnpv PI, 



113709 



Behold these shall come from far : 

And lo I these from the north and from the west / 

And these froin the land of Sinim. 

Isaiah xlix, 75. 



'' O rock! rock! when wilt thou open?' 



Xavier. 



"It is a great step towards the C hristianization of our pia7iei 
if Christianity gain entrance into China!' 

Neander in 1850, eight days be/ore his death 



CHINA. 



i^HINA: "The Middle Kingdom," " The Flowery 
\M; Land," " Far Cathay," the '' Land of Sinim," studied 
in any aspect is full of interest. 

I.— IT IS A VAST COUNTRY. 

For more than 3000 miles its shores are washed by the 
ceaseless surges of the sea. It encloses a desert, vast as 
any over which sterility ever reigned ; it embraces plains 
as exuberant as were ever pressed by foot of man. The 
area of its largest plain is greater by one-half than all the 
German Empire. 

Great rivers drain and irrigate the land. The Hoang-Ho 
is almost three times the length of the Ohio, while the 
Yang-tse is longer than the Mississippi, and drains a basin 
more extensive than the whole territory of the Republic 
of Mexico. One-tenth of the population derive their food 
from the waters of the country. According to the official 
catalogue of the world's exhibition in 185 1, the extent of 
its coal-fields was more than twenty times greater than 
those of all Europe, being 419,000 square miles, and side 
by side wii> the coal is iron ore. It has all degrees of 
altitude from the sea level to the perpetual snow line. 
Between Canton and Peking, the great road winds through 
a pass 8000 feet above the ocean. It has all varieties of 
climate. One may be ice-bound at Peking, while tha 



CHINA, 

thermometer seldom falls below 50° at Canton, and its 
inhabitants could subsist in comfort and luxury till the end 
of time. Make it a botanical garden and nothing grows 
that would not probably flourish in some part of the 
Empire. Try it as a zoological museum, and any animal 
on the globe might find congenial surroundings in some 
one of its valleys, hills or streams. It is not easy to make 
real to ourselves an Empire which comprises one-third 
of the continent of Asia, and one-tenth of the habitable 
globe ; which sweeps through seventy degrees of latitude 
and forty of longitude, whose circuit is half the circum- 
ference of the globe. 

Professor^ Douglas thus describes it : 

^* From one end of the country to the other the land 
blossoms as the rose, and yields to the diligent and careful 
tillage of the natives enough and to spare of all that is 
necessary for the comfort and well-being of man. Nor 
have these advantages become the recent possessions of 
the people. For many centuries they have been in full 
enjoyment of them, and on every side the evidences of 
long-established wealth and commercial enterprise are 
observable. 

'^From the great wall to the frontier of Tong-king, and 
from Thibet to the China Sea the country is dotted over 
with rich and populous cities, which are connected one 
with another by well-trodden roads or water highways. In 
these busy centres of industry merchants from all parts of 
the empire are to be found, who are as ready to deal in the 
fabrics of the native looms, porcelain, tea and other native 
products, as in cottons, metals and woolens of Europe. 

'^The rivers and canals are crowded, the vessels bearing 
silks and satins from Cheh-kiang and Kiang-su, tea from 
Gan-hwuy and Ho-nan, and rice from the southern 
provinces to parts of the empire which give in exchange 
for such gifts the corn and other products which they are 
able to spare," 



EXTENT COMPARED WITH OTHER COUNTRIES 5 

Extent Compared with Other Countries, — ^Various are 
the expedients to which men have resorted to •* take the 
great idea in." Comparisons in geography are now popu- 
lar. The school atlases of to-day have what are called 
"Inlets." These are smaller maps in the corner of the 
greater ones giving an outline of a familiar portion of 
country, on the scale of the larger chart, showing how 
many times the one might be embraced in the other. A 
map of Rhode Island on the same page with one of Texas, 
would show into bow many such states Texas might be 
divided; or one of Illinois on the chart of China would aid the 
mind in measuring the more remote with the more familiar. 
Try France thus on the chart of China and you may sketch 
the one seven times on the other, and have space to spare. 
Try the British Isles and you may overlay China with 
eighteen of them. Try the Chinese Empire by this com- 
parative chartoiogy, and it will exceed Great Britain and 
Ireland forty-four times. It can be dissected into 104 
Knglands or 776 Scotlands. Lay all Europe on China and 
you w\\\ have thirteen hundred square miles of the latter 
uncovered. It is one-third larger. Lay China on the 
United States, and it will overrun into the Gulf of Mexico, 
and four degrees into the Pacific ocean. Reverse the 
experiment and lay the United States including Alaska on 
China, and you may gem the edges with a half a dozen of 
Great Britain and Ireland ; that is, you will have a million 
anc a half square miles to add for good measure. Change 
it from its present shape to that of a belt of land a mile 
wide, and there would be room for a walking match from 
end to end, of thirty miles a day continued through niore 
th^n four 4nd a ha^f ceaturie^, 



6 DIA GRAM OF COMPARA TIVE POPULA TIONS. 



GREAT BRITAIN. 1 1 


UNITED STATES. 


Divide the population of China into 
equal four of those parts; that of the 
Russia, loj. The aggregate of the popul 
hundredths of that of China. 


GERM/ 


(NY. 






PJ 1 


FRANCE. 


:iual parts, and the 
d States, xo parts ; c 
3f these five great 

■ 




1 


population of Great Britain would 
)f Germany, k^ ; of France, 5 ; of 
cations would only equal. 60 one- 


RUSSIAN E 


MPIRE. 




S 1 



THE WHOLE SPACE REPRESENTS CHINA. 



8 CHINA, 

II.— CHINA AS A POPULOUS COUNTRY, 

What the population of Chinese Tartary and Thibet is, 
it is difficult to tell, as no correct census is ever taken and 
the tribes are migratory. About China proper we are left 
less in doubt. For the regulation of the capitation tax 
throughout the Empire, and for deteriinining the propor- 
tion of rice to be stored in case of famine, a census is 
taken each year. Dr. Williams in his " Middle Kingdom" 
says the census of 1812 gave the population of China 
proper at three hundred and sixty millions. That of 1852, 
found in the official residence of Yeh, Governor General of 
Canton, gives the population as three hundred and ninety- 
six millions. The same rate of increase would make the 
present population of the eighteen provinces four hundred 
and seven millions. In "Middle Kingdom," Vol. i, pp. 
206, 239, Dr. Williams estimates the population as 'less 
than it was in 181 2 because the Taiping rebellion probably 
destroyed twenty millions of human beings during 
eighteen years of carnage in the fifteen provinces to which 
It reached. Dr. Williams thinks few people competent to 
judge, place much confidence in the recent total of four 
hundred and fourteen millions given by a Russian at St. 
Petersburg, at least no one has supported it by independ- 
ent examination. He thinks the total of three hundred 
and sixty-three millions given in 1812 not a startling one 
considering the climate, soil, industry and economy of the 
land and people, but thinks the wars of late years must 
have reduced that number, though he does not forget that 
tney recuperate wonderfully, if asked to prove it he 
says in the " Missionary Herald," by such facts as' are 
known since the census of 1812 he would not now place the 
population higher than three hundred and forty millions 



A POPULOUS COUNTRY. g 

Mr. J. Hudson Taylor at the World's Conference in 
London, said, some think that possibly the population does 
not exceed 240 or 250 millions. He states that in one 
province seven millions of people recently died of famine, 
and in other parts of the country the population is not 
one-fifth of what it formerly^ was. Dr. Legge, forty years 
a missionary in China and now Professor of Chinese in 
the University of Oxford does not think that anybody can 
say anything more definite than the Chinese Ambassador 
in Paris, who recently stated the population at four 
hundred millions. 

Populousness Compared with Other Countries. — But 
who shall enable us to realize such numbers ? By what 
comparisons shall we try to comprehend their barest out- 
line ? The best minds of Christendom have plumed their 
imagination, have taxed their ingenuity, have strained 
their rhetoric to bring this multitude home to western 
Christians. They point out, that in two provinces of 
China the Emperor reigns over as many people as the 
Queen of England does in Great Britain and Ireland ; 
that there are more people in Peking than in the whole 
island of Jamaica ; that the Samoan islands though a prom- 
ising group of the South Seas with a total of 35,000 
population, would make but a speck of a city in China ; 
that one could find a dozen or more cities with as numer- 
ous a population, in a few days* journey ; that the four or 
five millions of people of Madagascar would only make 
one-seventh of the single province of Shan-tung. There 
are six times as many people in China as there are in 
the United States ; one-third more than in all the coun- 
tries of Europe combined ; twice as many as on the four 
continents, Africa, North and South America and Oceanica. 



10 CHINA. 

Fertile in expedients, the genius of the generation 
presses us anew by bidding us know that one-fourth of the 
human race is in China ; that every fourth person who 
lives and breathes upon this earth, who toils under the sun, 
sleeps under God's stars, or sighs and suffers beneath the 
heaven, is a Chinese. Every fourth child born into the 
world looks into the face of a Chinese mother ; every fourth 
pair given in marriage plight their troth in a Chinese cup 
of wine ; every fourth orphan weeping through the day, 
every fourth widow wailing through the watches of the 
night, is in China. Every fourth person who comes to die, 
or who sits in contemplation on his own dissolution, is a 
Chinese, One can but ask, What catechism will this fourth 
child learn ? What prosperity will follow this bridal ? 
What solace will be afforded these widows ? What watch- 
care will be given these orphans ? With what hopes will 
these multitudes depart ? 

Depart they must, and the ghastly arithmetic startles 
us, as we estimate how rapidly they go. Make your 
parallel lines with pall and spade and grave. Thirty-three 
thousand Chinese die every day ! We pale and shudder 
at the dim outline of the thought. And yet they stay not ! 
Bury all the people in London in three months, and the 
rest of mankind would start aghast at the grim event. 
Yet we record and read with carelessness the statement 
that four times every year that number die in China. It 
is equal to burying all the people of England in a year 
and a half ; all of Great Britain and Ireland in thirty 
months; all of New York city inside of three months; 
all the people of the United States in less than five 
years ! Terrific ordeal of the imagination ! We stagger 
at the arithmetic, and hide our face from the pallid ranks. 

We turn to the living. Put them in rank joining hands 



A SURPRISING HISTORY. ii 

and they will girdle the globe ten times at the equator with 
living, beating human hearts. Make them an army and let 
them move at the rate of one thousand a day, week after 
week and month after month, and they will not pass you 
in looo years. Constitute them pilgrims, and let 2000 
go past every day and every night, under the sunlight and 
under the solemn stars, and you must hear the ceaseless 
tramp, tramp, tramp, of the weary, pressing, throbbing 
throng for 500 long years. 

III.— CHINA HAS A SURPRISING HISTORY. 

The history of Rome is compassed by about a 
thousand years. That of Greece varies but little from 
that of Rome. The history of the Jews from Abraham 
to the destruction of Jerusalem is double that of Rome. 
But China has had a settled form of constitutional gov- 
ernment for forty centuries. Ancient Turanian and Aztec 
nations, Greece, Rome, Persia, Assyria and Babylon have 
risen, culminated and declined, while the Chinese govern- 
ment has survived through thirty changes of dynasty. 
Its laws codified 2,000 years ago are revised every five 
years. China was consolidated as a government B. C. 
1088 and substituted her present form of government for 
the feudal two hundred and twenty years before Christ, 
thus emancipating her people from the feudal system 
before the Christian era. In theory her government is 
despotic, but practically it is democratic, the equality of 
all men before the law being its fixed principle. The 
half-dozen nomadic tribes from the region of the Caspian 
sea, who settled in the basins drained by the Yellow and 
Yang-tse rivers, are to-day the greatest multitude of 
people gathered under one government to be found on the 
face of the globe, and Peking is the oldest existing capital 
of any country. 



12 CHINA. 

Compared with Classic and Sacred History. — What 
comparisons will aid us to a comprehension of this 
continuity of history ? A thousand years before Romulus 
dreamed of building the Seven-Hilled City the Chinese 
were a peaceful and prosperous people. While Solomon 
in all his glory was receiving the Queen of Sheba in 
Jerusalem, when the arches of Babylon first spanned the 
Euphrates, when the towers of Nineveh first cast their 
shadows into the Tigris, when Jonah threatened Nineveh 
with destruction, when Isaiah foretold the downfall of 
of Babylon, when Daniel prayed and prophesied, — 
through all these years the Chinese were engaged in agri- 
culture, commerce and literature. China was seven hundred 
years old when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. She 
had existed fifteen centuries when Isaiah prophesied of her 
future conversion. — Isaiah xlix, 12. 

IV.— CHINA HAS AN INGENIOUS, INTELLIGENT AND 
INDUSTRIOUS PEOPLE. 

Her records reach backward through four thousand 
years. She had, 1,700 years ago, a lexicon of the language 
which is still reckoned among her standards. The earliest 
missionaries found the Chinese with a knowlege of the 
magnet. 

Antiquity of Chinese Civilization . — Let us once more 
more attempt historic parallels. It is said that two cen- 
turies before Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees Chinese 
astronomers had recorded observations which have been 
verified by modern scientists. A half century earlier than 
that, the rocks of Hung Shan were graven to memoralize 
engineering works of her people, thought not to have been 
less extensive nor less difficult than those of Egypt. 
When Moses led the Israelites through the wilderness, 



ANTIQUITY OF CIVILIZATION. 13 

Chinese laws and literature rivalled, and Chinese religious 
knowledge excelled that of Egypt. A hundred years 
before the north wind rippled over the harp of the son of 
Jesse, Wung Wang, an Emperor of China, composed 
classics which are committed to memory at this day by 
every advanced scholar of the empire. While Homer 
was composing and singing the Iliad China's blind min- 
strels were celebrating her ancient heroes, whose tombs 
had already been with them through nearly thirteen cen- 
turies. Her literature was fully developed before England 
was invaded by the Norman conquerors. The Chinese 
invented firearms as early as the reign of England's First 
Edward, and the art of printing five hundred years before 
Caxton was born. They made paper A. D. 150, and gun- 
powder about the commencement of the Christian era. 

A thousand years ago the forefathers of the present 
Chinese sold silks to the Romans, and dressed in these 
fabrics when the inhabitants of the British Isles wore 
coats of blue paint and fished in willow canoes. Before 
America v/as discovered, China had a canal twelve hun- 
dred miles long. Her great wall was built two hundred 
and twenty years before Christ was born in Bethlehem. 
It varies from fifteen to thirty feet in height and breadth 
and passes over mountains and through valleys in an 
unbroken line for 1,500 miles. Six horsemen could ride 
abreast upon it. It contains material enough to build a 
wall five or six feet high around the globe. It is said to 
be the only artificial structure that would attract attention 
in a hasty survey of the globe. 

Its Survival to Present Times. — Nor is all this con- 
fined to the past. The Rev. Mr. Stevenson aptly remarked 
that " the Egypt of the Pharaohs has no living links with 
the E.gypt of the Khedive." But the civilization of China 



U CHINA. 

today is connected intimately by an unbroken line with 
the civilization of centuries of the past. She has at pres- 
ent 1,700 walled cities, the walls of which, in a straight 
line, would extend 6,000 miles. Include the great wall 
and they would reach twice from New York to San Fran- 
cisco, from the gulf to the lakes, and leave enough to 
enclose New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis. 
The longest of her canals is twice the length of the Erie. 
Her two thousand canals irrigate all parts of the empire, 
and are so connected with various rivers as to make a 
water communication from Peking to Canton, and goods 
and passengers can go from the capital to nearly every 
large town in the great river basins. She collects no tolls 
to keep these canals in repair. She bastinadoes a bridge 
builder whose work proves imperfect. Her public works 
are perhaps unequalled in any land, and by any people for 
the amount of human labor bestowed upon them. 

Education and Literature. — Of the millions that com- 
pose the empire, a vast proportion are able to read and 
write. There is a universal system of self-supporting day 
schools. Every parent who has a few pence to spare in 
the month will try to educate his child. Only literary 
graduates are admitted to public office, and ten thousand 
triannually enter the competitive examinations at Peking. 
Some who fail to pass these, continue to try until they are 
old men. They have a list of all graduates during the 
past five centuries. Education is spurred on by inculca- 
tion of precepts of sages and by emoluments of office, open 
to every child in the empire who wins literary distinction. 
The literature of China is overwhelming in extent, and the 
literati have such a superstitious reverence for all papers 
containing letters, as to place receptacles on the streets 
for their preservation, and to employ men to collect them 



MODERN PROGRESS AND ENTERPRISE, 15 

that they may not be trodden upon and defiled. The 
knowledge of the classics is so diffused that it is said were 
they all destroyed there are a million men in China who 
could reproduce them from memory. In the matter of 
language Dr. Douglass says : " By means of their three 
classes of characters, the hieroglyphics, ideograms and 
phonetics, the Chinese have been able to express and pre- 
serve the thoughts and sayings of their greatest and wisest 
writers through a series of centuries which dwarfs into 
insignificance all Western ideas of antiquity. For thirty 
centuries Chinamen have been accumulating stores of 
literary wealth, which are of themselves sufficiently impor- 
tant to attract the attention of scholars and to stir the 
literary ambition of students, and which do so in almost 
every country. But by the fresh discoveries of Messrs. 
De Lacouperie and Ball, not only is a new interest added 
to the language but it is brought into close and intimate 
relation with the tongues spoken by the great civilizing 
nations of the world." 

Modern Progress and Enterprise. — The Chinese have 
an antipathy to foreigners and often give credence to 
absurd stories about them, such as that they have " no 
joints to their knees," and that their sailors have '' webbed 
feet ; " that foreigners see a hundred yards into the earth, 
and missionaries extract the eyeballs of murdered Chinese 
children for the purpose of making charms. 

In the face of all this, they are learning of the foreigner 
and accepting many of his improvements. Dock-yards 
and arsenals have been established, gunboats and cor- 
vettes built and equipped at the Foo Chow dockyard and 
superintended by French inspectors ; a post chaplain of 
the British navy taught the future officers of a Chinese 
fleet, and a frigate was soon built and launched at the 



i6 CHINA, 

arsenal at Shanghai. Retiring officers of the British army 
trained the Camp of Instruction at Shanghai, and 
Americans the drilled force at Ningpo. The Taku forts 
frowned with Krupp guns. An Englishman of great 
ability trained as a schoolmaster by the Bishop of Victoria 
was engaged as a special translator ; the coast pilot ele- 
mentary books on Arithmetic, Algebra, and Euclid have 
long since been rendered in China. A small treatise on 
coal mining proved such a success that the late Viceroy of 
Nanking sat up all night to read it. They have re-organ- 
ized their army, furnishing them with the Enfield, Colt 
and Remington rifles. The cumbersome junks are giving 
way on the coast and great rivers, to fine steamships 
owned and run by the Chinese Merchant's Steamship 
Company. By their enterprise and ability to form exten- 
sive combinations in commercial transactions they are 
proving themselves not mere imitators but successful and 
original competitors to Western traders. Chinese banks, 
insurance companies and boards of trade are to be found 
in all the leading ports. Their commercial agencies 
ramify through all the principal business centers of West- 
ern Europe, Siam, and Australia, and they threaten by 
their emigration to make the Pacific ocean a Chinese lake. 
They have appropriated the sugar trade of Amoy, the 
flour importations of San P^rancisco, and control all the 
rice trade of their coasts with foreign countries. In 1872 
and again in 1876 their exports doubled their imports. 
The Imperial College of Peking, presided over by Dr. 
Martin, ere long became the West Point of China, with a 
hundred students mastering western sciences and lan- 
guages. Wheaton's International Law translated into 
Chinese, was quoted by the Chinese officials to the sur- 
prise of Western Ambassadors. Scientific and popular 



MODERN PROGRESS AND ENTERPRISE. 17 

magazines circulate among the literati and the ruling por- 
tion of society, and we learn of a native work on political 
geography giving information of the countries of Western 
Europe, and much of their history down to a very recent 
date in France, and to the visit of the Prince of Wales to 
India. 

Rev. Young J. Allen, D. D., LL.D., read an able paper 
before the Shanghai Conference on this topic, m which he 
classified these changes as : (i) Compulsory, or those 
necessitated by force or treaty obligations. The compul- 
sory occupation by the allies, in i860, of the imperial 
capital was followed by a treaty which gave commerce and 
missions the right of unmolested access to the entire land. 
(2) The semi-compulsory changes, or those initiated with 
a view to adjustments. The Chinese knew that the treaty 
must be fulfilled, and that in reorganizing their govern- 
ment they could not do better than copy the strong points 
of their late adversaries. Hence, the innovations of 
foreign military camps, arsenals, customs, schools, coast 
surveys, etc. (3) Spontaneous-voluntary changes. Inter- 
national relations become cordial. The press is called 
into acquisition, newspapers and books are translated. 
China has become conscious of her wants ; a mint, banks, 
post-offices follow. (4) Imperial or those which define the 
position and policy of the country. 

They exhibit great tact and skill in the use of modern 
appliance, and do not hesitate to migrate for business 
purposes. They are seamen on Pacific steamers, brake- 
men on Cuba railroads, miners in Peru ; are in the shoe 
shops, laundries, kitchens and woolen mills of the United 
States ; are on the sugar plantations of the West Indies, 
and are to be found from San Diego to Puget Sound. Dr. 
K. H. Graves says ; There are 50,000 of them in the 



I8 CHINA. 

Philippine Islands ; 50,000 in the English colony at Singa- 
pore, where they own four-fifths of all the real estate ; 
50,000 more in the Malay Peninsula ; 1,300,000 in Siam ; 
thousands in Cochin China, and thousands more in Borneo, 
Java and Sumatra. The colonies founded by the Spaniards, 
Dutch, French and English are being rapidly filled up by 
Chinese. In the Sandwich Islands there are more Chinese 
men than men of the native race. 

They are equal to every climate, whether that of the 
iceberg of the north, or the malarious tracts of the tropics. 
Their power of endurance of all climates is unequalled by 
those of any other race. A British writer has said, ** If 
the hard work of this world were to be farmed out to the 
lowest bidder, with political protection and honest pay, it 
seems likely that the Chinese race would take the contract." 

v.— CHINA HAS COMPLICATED RELIGIOUS SYSTEMS. 

The primitive religion of China was a species of nature- 
worship. Hills, rivers and ancestors received offerings. 
"Heaven,'* "the Supreme Ruler" and a fabled "Six 
honored Ones," were worshiped. Divination was practiced, 
but no rewards or punishments of conduct were inculcated. 

Blending of the Three Great Religions. — There are 
three prominent religions in China at present, Confucian- 
ism, Taoism and Buddhism, but no person is exclusively 
of either. A Chinaman is a religious triangle, and when 
he becomes a Christian, Christianity wins a triumph over 
three opposing faiths at once, one of which has laid hold 
of the intellect, another of the conscience, and the third 
the affections of the people. The blending of these is 
seen in the fact, that while Confucianism is theoretically 
the only religion of the state, Taoism furnishes the gods 
of literature and of war, as well as the patron gods of 



CONFUCIANISM, 19 

each city and town, while Buddhist priests must be invited 
to assist in religious ceremonies, and the whole resolve 
themselves into the worship of gods and ancestors. 
Buddhist and Taoist priests attend the same ^weddings and 
funerals and pray side by side, as if their systems of 
religion were identical in origin and purpose, with merely 
an accidental difference of name. 

I. Confucianism. — Confucianism stands pre-eminent, 
however, as indigenous and the most ancient of the exist- 
ing forms of faith. Prof. James Legge, Chinese Prof, at 
Oxford, says that the number of Buddhists in China is 
greatly over-estimated. Rhys Davids, in his Buddhism, 
estimates the number at 445,000,000 in China and Japan. 
Says Professor Legge : — " If we lop off 400,000,000 from 
this aggregate we shall not be doing injustice to Buddhism. 
Confucianism is pre-eminently the religion of China. 
Buddhism has long been tolerated, and is widely spread 
among the people ; still, it is an itwan — ^a strange system.' 
Excepting those who have adopted the Buddhist tonsure, 
the vast majority of people, however frequently they may 
be found in Buddhist or Taoist temples, would claim to be 
followers of the great sage. Of all religious systems, 
Confucianism, perhaps, has the greatest following ; then 
Christianity, then Hindooism, then Mohammedanism, and 
we would place Buddhism in the fifth place.' Faber says^ 
''Confucius is the Chinese of the Chinese, the greatest 
personage of the largest empire of the world," and that 
he has exerted the greatest influence, when time and 
numbers are taken into the account, of any man who ever 
lived. M. Hue says : " Never has it been given to any 
mortal to exercise during so many centuries, so extensive 
an empire over his fellow creatures, although every one 
Vnows perfectly well that Confucius was simply a mortal 



20 CHINA. 

man, who lived in the principahty of Lausin, six centuries 
before the Christian era." He is not a myth, nor a demi- 
god, but a true historic person, who taught three thousand 
disciples. He was not an ascetic, not even a spiritual man. 
He lived a hundred years later than Buddha, and a 
hundred years earlier than Socrates. There are 1,500 
temples in his honor, at which 62,600 pigs, rabbits, sheep 
and deer, and 27,000 pieces of silk are offered annually. 
The Chinese claim that while the different religions fluctu- 
ate from time to time, ^^Confucianism has not suffered 
attrition through myriads of ages, and it has regenerated 
China in government, morals, manners, and doctrines." 
The books of Confucius are the text boc)ks in the literary 
examinations for all positions in the government. 

Confucianism not a Spiritual Religion. — Confucianism 
inculcates benevolence, propriety, knowledge and faith, 
but deals rather with morals and politics than religion, and 
with this life only. "I do not understand life, how can I 
know death," said Confucius. It has one part of the 
golden rule, teaching that " what you would not have 
others do to you do not to them." It fails to advance to 
the sentiment that we ought to return good for evil. The 
fundamental principle of Chinese law founded on the 
teachings of Confucius is that of the filial and parental 
relation. The inferior must venerate the superior. 
Government, general and local, is modelled on the family, 
those in authority are parents, the people are the children, 
and the Emperor himself is son of Heaven. It is the most 
ancient form of government, the patriarchial. Of the 
three thousand crimes punishable by law, none is reckoned 
so great as disobedience to parents. 

The Doctrines of Confucianism. — Mr. Ernest Faber, a 



DOCTRINES OF CONFUCIANISM. 21 

missionary to China, in a Digest of the Doctrines of Con- 
fucianism thus summarizes its defects and errors : — 

Confucianism recognizes no relation to a living God. 

There is no distinction made between the human soul 
and the body, nor is there any clear definition of man, 
either from a physical or from a psychological point of view. 

There is no explanation given, why it is that some men 
are born saints, and others as ordinary mortals. 

All men are said to possess the disposition and strength 
necessary for the attainment of moral perfections, but the 
contrast with the actual state remains unexplained. 

There is wanting in Confucianism a decided and serious 
tone in its treatment of the doctrine of sin, for, with the 
exception of moral retribution in social life, it mentions no 
punishment for sin. 

Confucianism is generally devoid of a deeper insight 
into sin and evil. 

Confucianism finds it, therefore, impossible to explain 
death. 

Confucianism knows no mediator, none that could restore 
original nature in accordance with the ideal which man 
finds in himself. 

Prayer and its ethical power, finds no place in the sys- 
tem of Confucius. 

Though confidence is indeed frequently insisted upon, 
its presupposition, viz., truthfulness in speaking, is never 
practically urged, but rather the reverse. 

Polygamy is presupposed and tolerated. 

Polytheism is sanctioned. 

Fortune-telling, choosing of days, omens, dreams and 
other illusions (of phoenixes, etc.,) are believed in. 

Ethics are confounded with external ceremonies and a 
precise despotic political form. 

The position which Confucius assumed toward ancient 
institutions is a capricious one. 

The assertion that certain musical melodies influence 
the morals of the people is ridiculous. 

The influence of mere good example is exaggerated, and 
Confucius himself proves it least of all. 

In Confucianism the system of social life is tyranny 



i2 CHINA. 

Women are slaves. Children have no rights in relation to 
their parents, whilst subjects are placed in the position of 
children with regard to their superiors. 

Filial piety is exaggerated into deification of parents. 

The net result of Confucius' system, as drawn by himself, 
is the worship of genius, /. e. deification of man. 

There is, with the exception of ancestral worship, which 
IS devoid of any true ethical value, no clear conception of 
the dogma of immortality. 

All rewards are expected in this world, so that egotism is 
unconsciously fostered, and if not avarice, at least ambition. 

The whole system of Confucianism offers no comfort to 
ordinary mortals, either in life or in death. 

The history of China shows that Confucianism is incapa- 
ble of effecting for the people a new birth to a higher life 
and nobler effects, and Confucianism is now in practical 
life quite alloyed with Shumanistic and Buddhistic ideas 
and practices. 

Confucius a Failure. — Bishop Wiley, says, "China can 
advance no further until she breaks away from and passes 
on beyond Confucius. He has been a beneficent con- 
servative power during the past centuries, but he is utterly 
unable to carry his people beyond the semi-civilized state 
in which they have been living for twenty centuries." 
Edkins says Confucianism has failed to make the Chinese 
a moral people. The habits of the people keep the stand- 
ard of principle low, commercial integrity and truth-speak- 
ing are less common than with Christian countries. 
Polygamy is a cause of moral weakness. There is no 
sense of shame at falsehood. Domestic slavery promotes 
a vast system of concubinage. Yet he places its morality 
higher than that of Buddhism or Taoism. 

Confucianism a Barrier to Christianity. It presents 
strong resistance to the christianization of China. A 
Chinese preacher, chaplain to the English Bishop of 
Ningpo, sa 



CONFUCIUS A FAILURE. 23 

(i.) The Confucian religion is reverenced by all classes, 
from the king down to the meanest of his subjects. (2.) 
All power, authority and renown, come through the Con- 
fucian religion. (3.) Its roots are deeper ; it has been 
reverenced through so many ages, from its first beginning 
until the present day. (4.) Although some of its doctrines 
agree with Scripture, some are opposed to it ; men only 
know the parts that agree and pass over those that dis- 
agree. The greatest of all obstacles is the Confucian sect. 

2. — Taoism. — Taoism originated B. C. 604 with Lautze 
or Laou Tsoo, a contemporary of Confucius. His follow- 
ers became astrologers, alchemists, geomancers or hermits, 
and in late years imitated Buddhist idol-worship and the 
monastic system. It is a profound system of alchemy and 
astrology. It has a great medicine-god from whom all 
people beg prescriptions. Thunder is produced by a god 
who strikes a hammer and drum together, and lightning 
by the reflections from his wife's mirror. Dragon-worship 
constitutes a prominent feature of the system. Many of 
the national gods properly belong to Taoism. 

3. — Buddhism. — Buddhism is an exotic in China. It was 
promulgated by missionaries from India, when in its giant 
duel with Brahmanism, the latter succeeded to the sover- 
eignty of that land. Buddhism in its integrity does not 
obtain in China proper. Thibet has a definite but indige- 
nous form of Buddhism. It exerts, however, a great 
influence in the Chinese empire. Klaproth claims that 
*^ The wild nomads of Central Asia have been changed 
into amiable and virtuous men by it and its beneficial 
influence has been felt in Northern Siberia." Edkins says 
it has for the last hundred years been spreading in Siberia. 
He concedes the good result from the Buddhist teaching 
of the misery of vice and the benefit of self-restraint, but 
makes a terrific arraignment of its deficiencies. The crime 



24 CHINA. 

of killing, for instance, rests chiefly on the doctrine of the 
transmigration of souls ; insects must not be killed lest 
one cause the death of departed relatives, whose souls 
inhabit them ; monks are vegetarians for the same reason, 
not eating flesh because it involves the destruction of life. 
They keep reservoirs of water near mountains for the 
preservation from death of fish, snakes, tortoises, shell-fish, 
and succor goats and birds from the same motive. Thus 
Buddhist morality confounds men and animals as alike 
having an immortal soul. Ideas of sin and misfortune are 
also confounded. The forgiveness of sin is obtained 
through chanting of prayers, and an ascetic life. 

Two popular forms of the religious thought and habit 
of the Chinese demand special notice. 

{a) Ancestor Worship. — The worship of ancestors ante- 
dates, but was adopted by Confucius and is the most 
powerful religious custom affecting China. Mencius says : 
" The nourishment of parents when living is not sufficient 
to be accounted the great thing. This is only to be had 
by performing their obsequies when dead." It is the most 
universal and ancient form of idolatry found in the country. 
It hangs a curtain of gloomy superstition over the land. 
Ancestral halls are endowed and repaired and the cere- 
monies perpetuated thereby. 

Tablets twelve to fifteen inches high are erected for 
departed relatives, before which incense is burned morning 
and evening. For a deceased father the ceremonial must 
be kept up for forty-nine days. A bridegroom's ancestors 
must be worshipped by his bride as well as himself. When 
a scholar obtains his degree, when an officer is advanced 
in rank, and on anniversaries of births and deaths, this 
worship must be performed. At the Festival of the Tombs 
in the spring time, the people universally have a family 



ANCESTOR WORSHIP. 25 

gathering to worship the dead. In ancestral halls, in 
private rooms, in the house, before a few tablets or hun- 
dreds, the worship ^oes on. A family is mentioned in Can- 
ton having eleven hundred tablets in each of two rooms, 
with the third containing an image of the ancestor, a dis- 
ciple of Confucius who lived B. C. 300 years. The tablets 
are arranged from above downwards, the oldest being on 
the top. The venerable amongst the living may have 
tablets also, but covered with red paper. 

The object of this worship is two-fold, viz.: to secure 
the repose of the dead, to provide them with comfort, 
clothing, furniture, made of paper and transported to them 
by burning ; and also to secure the worshipper from dam- 
age in person, business or property, from the restless 
ghoists of these departed relations. One-half of the female 
population of China devote their time not occupied in 
domestic duties, to making articles connected with ances- 
tral worship. 

The custom of infant marriages is largely connected 
with the desire for heirs who will perform the rites due to 
parents after their decease. The same notion fosters 
polygamy. It tends to increase the localization and over- 
crowding of the population. Chinese dislike to emigrate 
because they must leave the tombs and fail in the worship 
of their ancestors. The family of Confucius has con- 
tinued through sixty generations to the present day in the 
same locality. The eighteenth day of the second moon is 
kept sacred by the Chinese as the anniversary of his death. 
One form of public charity consists of offerings to the 
dead poor, or those whose burial places are unknown. A 
boy having lost his parents when young and unable to 
trace them, made wooden representations of them which 
he worshipped. 



26 CHINA. 

When a rebellion breaks out in any of the eighteen 
provinces the first step taken by the government is not to 
raise troops, but to despatch messengers to search for the 
ancestral tombs of the leaders in the rebellion, to open and 
desecrate these and scatter their contents, as the speediest 
method of spoiling their prospects of success. In the 
Taiping rebellion (1855) the Governor of the Province of 
Kwang-Si stated that the tomb of the leading spirits of the 
insurgents having been invaded, was found to contain a 
tortoise with green hair, which was killed and the tomb 
destroyed. 

Of the five Tartar dynasties which have ruled in China 
not one has failed to adopt the national religion which 
always includes the worship of the ancestral tablets of the 
Emperors. Not a tithe of the money and thought is 
expended on other features of Confucianism and Buddhism 
combined, that is given to ancestral worship. 

Estimated Cost of the Custom. — Dr. Yates in the 
Chinese Recorder some years since, and more recently, with 
a slight variation, in the Shanghai Conference, estimates 
that not less than $6,000 are expended at each of these 
festivals giving $18,000 annually in the Shanghai district 
for charitable ancestral worship. As there are eighteen 
provinces and ninety districts to a province, taking Shang- 
hai as an example, the amount per annum for the district 
deity would be $29,160^000. Add the expenditure for the 
Foo deities and the amount would reach $31,172,000, 
representing however only one public charity for the dead 
whose burial places are unknown, independently of the 
same sort of personal and private sacrifice. 

The amount expended by each family in the worship of 
their own ancestors is apart from this. Our author esti- 
mates it at $1.50 per person, and in a population of four 



COST OF THE CUSTOM. 27 

hundred millions, this amounts to $120,000,000 to which at 
least $60,000,000 must be added for charitable ancestor 
worship. 

All this is but a part of China's tribute to her servial 
superstitions. The living generation is bound to the 
dead generations. China does not think forward but back- 
ward. 

Rev. H. V. Noyes, in the Chinese Recorder of July, 1881, 
gives as a specimen of general Chinese giving for idol- 
atrous purposes, the following: The statistics are for, ist. 
The yearly income. 2nd. The expenditure for idolatrous 
purposes. 3rd. The proportion this is, of the income. 

1-4 
1-4 
1-4 
1-3 
1-5 
1-5 
1-5 
1-5 
2-5 

We thus see that these expenditures range from a little 
less than one-fifth to a little more than two-fifths of the 
income. 

(b.) Feng Shui. — The other popular superstition which 
we must note is that known as Feng Shui, and is closely 
allied with the preceding. 

Translated in the vernacular of the western "bar- 
barian " it is the "' Science of Luck.*' A mysterious 
principle pervades earth, air and water — but is unequally 
distributed in different localities, on the presence of 
which depends bodily vigor, family prosperity, and busi- 
ness success. The fortunes of each family are involved 
in securing a spot most pervaded with it for the tombs 
of parents. Spots thus selected for tombs years before 





INCOME. 


EXPENDITURE. 


RATIO. 




I 


$120 


$29.30 


244-1000 


almost 


2 


$ 60 


$14.84 • 


247-1000 


almost 


3 


$84 


$21.48 


256-1000 


more than 


4 


$ 60 


$21.69 


362-1000 


more than 


5 


$33>^ 


$ 7.31 


219-1000 


more than 


6 


% 54 


$12.20 


226-1000 


more than 


7 


$66% 


$12.72 


191- 1000 


less than 


8 


$i33>^ 


$25.11 


188-1000 


less than 


9 


$48 


$20.20 


421-1000 


more than 



nS CHINA, 

use, when opened, are reported to have been found with 
lamps burning in them, lighted years before. When the 
iuck doctors point out such an auspicious place for a 
tomb, if in a neighbor's field, it must be bought at any 
price. 

Feng Shui determines as much the conduct of the living 
as the burial of the dead. It has a political status. Dr. 
Eitel says, "When there is anywhere in China a dispute 
between the people on the ground of alleged interference 
with the disturbance of the Feng Shui aspects of a grave 
or house, the judicial tribunals of China will entertain 
the claim, examine into its merits, and decide the case on 
the presumption that Feng Shui is a reality and a truth. 
not a fiction. When land had to be ceded to the hated 
foreigners up and down the China coast as a so-called 
* Foreign Concession,' the Chinese government would 
invariably select a spot condemned by the experts in 
Feng Shui as one that combined a deadly breath with 
all those indications of the compass which imply dire 
calamities upon all that settle down there, and upon their 
children's children. If the spot had not to be ceded 
by treaty it would be pointed out to the unsuspecting 
foreigner as the only one open for sale, and anyhow the 
ignorant barbarian sceptic would become the supposed 
dupe and laughing stock of the astute Chinaman. Witness, 
for instance, the views held by intelligent Chinese with 
regard to the island of Shameen, the Foreign Concession, 
so to say, of Canton. It was originally a mud flat in 
the Canton river in the very worst position Feng Shui 
knows of." 

The Peking government was memorialized a few years 
since, the memorialists calling attention to the fact that 
the trees around the tombs of the deceased Emperors 



FENG-SHUL 2g 

were being destroyed. The government commanded its 
discontinuance if it should be found to interfere with the 
Feng Shui of the Imperial Burial Grounds. All this 
enters, too, into the common life of the people. A house 
can only be built on a certain spot or the corners of it 
set in a given way ; the doors set originally or changed 
subsequently ; the chimneys built above a determined 
height, or garbage thrown but on a prescribed side of 
the building, without interference with good Feng Shui. 
To have success in a business undertaking, a son born in 
a house, sickness averted, lawsuits successfully conducted, 
or to win literary honors, Feng Shui must be pTfoperly 
and carefully regarded. 

Each person as well as each village has his own Feng 
Shui, and as these conflict, endless lawsuits grow out of 
disputes about interference with it. He is a bad man 
indeed who would cut down a tree, or change the course 
of a road, thereby disturbing the relations of Feng Shui. 
It has within a few years past been made the basis of 
objection to the erection of telegraph poles at Shanghai ; 
to railways because the embankment diverted the course 
of water ; to a road from Tientsin to the Chaitang coal 
mines ; to the erection of church steeples because, being 
higher than the surrounding buildings, they disturbed 
Feng Shui ; to the building of bridges, the working of 
coal mines, the digging of proposed canals, the height 
of foreigners' residences and warehouse, and to many 
other things which involved elevations or the relations 
of running water. Missionaries* residences have to be 
controlled by this species of divination, — *^ this blind 
groping of the Chinese mind," as Dr. Eitel considers it, 
"after a system of natural science.** The government 
at Hang Chow ordered the missionaries to another sitQ 



9> CHINA. 

altogether, because the place they occupied was near one 
of the most famous natural objects in the whole province, 
and the American missionaries had built on it a chapel 
so lofty, that it changed a most fortunate aspect into one 
sinister and malign and thereby occasioned apprehension 
to the citizens. The church and school architecture and 
the very sites of our missions must thus be controlled 
by the Science of Luck. 

Ineffici ency of the Chinese Religion. — Large benevo- 
lence and kindness to both men and animals have been 
claimed for the Chinese as the result of their religions. 
It is probable that the Buddhist doctrine of metempsy- 
chosis does superinduce some carefulness in the matter 
of destroying life, but the cruel and inhuman character 
of Chinese punishments at law, show the absolu.e failure 
of all these religions combined to master the barbarous 
element of heathenism. 

In the Chinese army the penalty of opium-smoking 
consists of slitting the upper lip for the first offense 
and decapitation for the second. Cutting the flesh off a 
living criminal is mentioned as a Chinese reformatory 
measure. The editor of the China Mail published at 
Hong Kong, thus describes Ling-Chih : 

"It means being tied to a cross and then subjected to 
tortures so fiendish that even the North American Indian 
has never invented anything more horrible ; that the 
death agony is prolonged through such operations as 
flaying the face, cutting off the breasts, excising the 
muscles, nipping off the fingers and toes, and finally 
disemboweling the wretched victim who even then has 
been known to manifest signs of life ! " 

He then gives the following account of " everyday ** 
punishments in China: ^ 



INEFFICIENCY OF THE CHINESE RELIGION. 31 

These are described by a well-known writer — and we 
can confirm most of his statements from personal knowl- 
edge — as follows : Compressing the ankles and squeezing 
the fingers, until crushed, between boards ; twisting the 
ears, kneeling on chains, striking the lips until jellied, 
putting the hands in stocks behind the back, or tying the 
hands to a bar under the knees and chaining the neck to 
a stone. Cases are officially recorded of nailing prisoners' 
hands between boards, using beds of iron, scalding with 
boilding water, inserting red hot spikes, cutting the tendon 
Achilles and burying the body up to the neck in lime, 
while the prisoner is forced to swallow large draughts 
of water. Finally, a lighter (?) punishment is to make 
the criminal kneel on a mixture of pounded glass, sand 
and salt until the knees are excoriated. Flogging to 
death with the bamboo is also not uncommon. There are 
many other minor punishments, but we have omitted one 
we knew to be practiced at Shanghai on some rebels 
captured by the Imperialists during the Taiping rebellion, 
driving fine spikes of bamboo down between the nails 
and the fingers or toes. If devilish ingenuity can go 
further than this, we shall be surprised. 

The editor closes by saying : 

In the name of common humanity — not of the picture- 
pocket-handkerchief sort — we call upon our colonial gov- 
ernment to take measures to remove from our flag the 
shame of participating in such doings. 

Nor does such treatment of dead infants as Dr. Martin 
of the Imperial College at Peking describes, speak well 
for the humanitarism of Buddhism. He says : 

Among the Chinese, infant funerals are unknown. 
* * * As soon as the last breath is drawn, the little 
body is committed to the hand of a stranger who buries it 
in some unknown spot, or casts it in one of those offensive 
receptacles for the untimely fruits of the tree of human- 
ity, which are known to Europeans by the designation of 
" baby towers." With no weeping father to follow the little 
coffin (if coffin it has), and no tender mother to plant 
flowers on the little grave (if grave it has), it is cast out as 



p CHINA. 

an unclean thing and consigned to speedy oblivion — often- 
times indeed abandoned to the beasts of the field and the 
birds of the air. 

The reason of this strange anomaly — this seeming 
exception of the laws of nature — is found in the teachings 
of a perverse creed. Buddhism inculcates the transmi- 
gration of souls, and it resorts to a monstrous fiction in 
order to account for the death of children, at an age when 
they are unable to repay the kindness and care of their 
parents. 

He then explains that such infants are regarded as 
creditors, who in a former state, failing to obtain their 
dues, have come thus into the family in the form of 
infants, and staid long enough to get the equivalent of 
the arrears, principal and interest. A sick child, he tells 
us, is watched with tender solitude, but when dead they 
endeavor to efface every trace of the child's existence, 
carefully obliterating the footsteps of the stranger who 
bore it away, and smiting with a knife on the threshold 
as it passes the door in token of severing the last link that 
bound it to the family. 

Nor do we suppose it unfair to hold ancestor worship 
responsible largely for the infanticide of female children. 
Prayer is never offered for female children^ and their com- 
ing is viewed as a calamity. A Chinese official report 
says, " Many of them are consigned to the nearest pond or 
stream.** They are often drowned in tubs of water, 
strangled or buried alive as one might a litter of kittens, 
and all this largely and often wholly because they, as 
girls, cannot make offerings of food at the family tombs 
and in the ancestral halls. To secure these infants from 
death, mothers often obtain the promise of their adoption 
by some family as wives for their sons, or sell them at an 
early age at the highest price, in the same terms they 
would describe any other sale of property, as additional 



EARLY MISSIONS, 33 

wives, concubines, or slaves, the buyer having right to 
re-sell. 

We charge much of this on ancestral worship, as we do 
the ambition which is inspired in widows to starve, drown 
or otherwise destroy themselves as " virtuous and filial,'* 
that tablets on which their names are inscribed may be 
placed in the temples and incense offered them by the 
Chinese gentry. 

VI.— CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA. 

Early Missions. — It is probable that Christianity was 
introduced at a very early date into China. In the sixth 
century the Nestorian Christains had missious there [See 
Gibbon and Mosheim.] These became flourishing a 
century later. Six or seven emperors of the Tang dynasty 
favored Christianity, and parts of the Bible were translated 
and placed ^4n the library of the palace." In the ninth 
century, persecution sent three thousand Christian priests 
into private life, and subsequently "scattered the Christians 
and changed their places of worship into heathen temples." 
A century later than this (the seventeenth), the Jesuits 
found traces of these Nestorian missions. 

The Roman Catholics have had missions in China for 
nearly six hundred years, though with a fluctuating for- 
tune. After seventy-six years they were almost wholly 
broken up. Recently they have increased their force of 
workers ; in 1870 they claimed 404,530 adherents. 

The Greek church was established in Peking in 1685, 
and four years later a treaty, formed between the Russian 
and Chinese governments, resulted in the permanent 
establishment of a college of Greek priests at the Chinese 
capital. It was not until recent years that they attempted 
to make proselytes. 



34 CHINA. 

Modern Missions . — Protestant missions in China were 
begun by the London Missionary Society sending Rev. 
Robert Morrison to Canton in 1807. Morrison's temper 
was manifest when he prepared for the Divinity school at 
night, after making boot-trees all day. He was indomit- 
able. Unable to do direct missionary work, he labored as 
a servant of the East India Company in compiimg a 
Chinese dictionary and translating the Bible into that 
tongue. For six years he labored alone, then he was joined 
by William Milne, of like spirit, who at sixteen was wont 
to spend whole evenings in prayer in the sheep-cotes of 
his native Scotland. In 1814 Morrison baptized his first 
convert, and issued the New Testament in Chinese. In 
1818 he and Milne jointly published the whole Bible in 
that language. Up to 1841, fifty-eight missionaries 
reached China and the Maylayan Archipelago. In 1842, 
the missionaries outside of China proper, feeling unsafe, 
removed to the treaty ports in China. For eighteen years 
they labored at these five ports and at Hong Kong. In 
i860 ten new ports were opened in North China and up the 
Yang-tse river, where missionaries were soon established. 
Since then the whole country has been opened, and Hon. 
Wm. B. Reed, the American Ambassador, said toleration 
was introduced into the treaty at the suggestion of the 
Chinese themselves. 

This was done by Article XXIX of the Urlted States 
treaty with China, which is as follows : 

** The principles of the Christian religion, as professed 
by the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches are 
recognized as teaching men to do good, and to do to 
others as they would have others do to them. Hereafter, 
those who quietly profess and teach these doctrines shall 
' net be harassed or persecuted on account of their faith. 



MODERN MISSIONS, 35 

Any person, whether citizen of the United States or 
Chinese convert, who according to these tenets peaceably 
teaches and practices the principles of Christianity shall in 
no case be interfered with or molested." 

An emphatic decree from the throne was issued in 1891, 
which says : 

^'The right of foreign missionaries to promulgate their 
religion in China is provided for by treaties, and by im- 
perial decrees which were issued prior to those treaty stipu- 
lations. The authorities of all the provinces were com- 
manded to afford them protection as circumstances might 
require. 

**The religions of the West have for their object the in- 
culcation of virtue, and, though our people become 
converted, they continue to be Chinese subjects. There is 
no reason why there should not be harmony between the 
people and the adherents of foreign religions. The whole 
trouble arises from lawless ruffians fabricating baseless 
stories. 

" We command the Manchu generals, the viceroys and 
governors everywhere, to issue proclamations clearly 
explaining to the people that they must on no account 
give ear to such idle tales and wantonly cause trouble.*' 

Chinese Converts. — Christianity is the power of God to 
the salvation of Chinese. Witness the testimony of con- 
verts, their endurance of persecution on account of Chris- 
tianity, their zeal in propagating it, and the testimony of 
others to their integrity. 

Let us glance at a few instances : 

I. A Confucian temple keeper named Ch'e at the city 
of Poklo, on the Canton East River, received the Scrip- 
tures from a colporteur of the London Mission, became 
convinced of the folly of idolatry, and was baptized by 



36 CHINA. 

Dr. Legge. He gave up his calling, and set to work 
among his acquaintances and friends as a self-appointed 
Scripture reader. He would go through the streets of the 
city and the country round with a board on his back rcn- 
taining some text of Scripture. So successful was he that 
in about three years' time, about one hundred of the people 
were baptized. And so mightily grew the word of God, 
and prevailed, that surprise and hostility were excited, and 
a fierce persecution broke out. The Christians were driven 
from the villages and their property was plundered. Ch'e, 
the colporteur, was seized, and twice within forty-eight 
hours dragged before the Literati, and called upon to 
recant. This he steadfastly refused to do. He was there- 
fore tortured by being suspended by the arms during the 
night. The next morning he was brought forward in an 
enfeebled state, pale and trembling, for a second trial. 
The officials and mandarins were cowed into submission by 
the gentry ; but this brave old man was still firm in his 
resolve to cleave to the Bible and to Christ, and expressed 
a hope that his judges would some day embrace the new 
doctrine. This was more than they could tolerate, and, 
like the judges of Stephen, they ran upon him with one 
accord and killed him by repeated blows of their side 
arms, and threw him into the river. Thus perished the 
first Protestant Christian Martyr of China. 

2. A Chinese merchant came into the American Bap- 
tist Mission Chappel in Shanghai and after talking with 
him for a short time, Dr. Yates sold him a copy of the New 
Testament. He took it home, 200 or 300 miles away, and 
after about three months appeared again in the chapel. 
He came back to say that he was under the impression 
that the book was not complete, that surely it must have 
other parts, and so he came to get the Old Testament, as 



CHINESE CONVERTS. 37 

he had read and studied the New, What lad he done 
with the New Testament ? He had taken it to his home 
and shown it to the schoolmasters and the reading people 
They said, ^' This is a good book. Confucius himself must 
have had something to do with it.*' As there was only 
one copy, they unstitched this one^ and took it leaf by leaf^ 
and all those who could write took a leaf home. They made 
twelve or fifteen copies complete of the New Testament, 
and introduced it into their schools without any " conscience 
clause." It was introduced as a class-book, throughout 
that district, for heathen schools, 

3. "I am addicted to every sin you can imagine," said 
Liu Kin Shan to Rev. Griffiths John. "I am an opium 
smoker, a fornicator, a gambler, a drunkard, an unfilial 
son, and everything that is bad. Can Jesus Christ save me ?** 
He had strolled into the chapel at Hankow The preacher 
said ''Yes." They prayed, and instantaneous conversion 
followed, and Liu, now more than fifty years old, is the 
center of a gospel work in his own locality, where he was 
widely known as a riotous libertine. 

4. A proprietor of a gambling hell in Cheh Kiang 
Province heard a Chinese Christian preaching in the streets 
of his own city, unaccompanied by a foreign missionary 
and all alone. " The Saviour of whom I speak is mighty 
to save," said he ; " He is able to cure the opium smoker 
of his opium smoking. He is able to cure the gambler of 
his propensities for gambling, the debauchee of his bad 
habits, and you know very well that it is useless for men 
who are addicted to these evils, to try to cure themselves. 
But the Saviour whom I preach, Jesus Christ, is mighty to 
save." The gambling hell proprietor saiu : " If this 
Jesus can save me he shall," and he went home, closed that 
gambling place, sent all the bad women away, and a part 



38 CHINA, 

of the house has since been used for preaching the gospel. 

5. Rev, Dr. Baldwin of the Methodist Episcopal mis- 
sion says : " A man who had been an opium smoker, and 
an opium seller, by name of Ling Ching Ting was con- 
verted at Foochow. 

In 1863, accidentally hearing Rev. S. L. Binkley preach- 
ing, he went to him and said : ^' Did you say that Jesus 
(I never heard of Him before ; I don't know who He is) ; 
but did you say that He can save me from all my sins ?" 
*'Yes," replied Mr. Binkley, '^that is just what I said." 
" But," the Chinaman responded, **you didn't know me 
when you said that ; you didn't know that I had been a 
gambler and a sorcerer for many years ; you didn't know 
that I had been a licentious man ; you didn't know that I 
had been an opium-smoker for twenty years, and every one 
knows that any man who has smoked opium for that 
length of time can never be cured of the habit. If you 
had known all this, you wouldn't have said that Jesus can 
save me from all my sins — would you?" -^Yes,'* replied 
the missionary, "I would have said just what I did ; and I 
tell you now that Jesus can save you from all your sins." 

The poor, sinful Chinaman was bewildered. It seemed 
to him impossible of belief. Yet there was a charm about 
the very idea of a Saviour, who could deliver him from all 
his sins. He went away in deep thought. The next day 
he sought Mr. Binkley at his residence, to talk with him 
about this wonderful Saviour ; and day after day for many 
days he came, examining the proofs of Christianity, and 
bringing his objections to be solved by the missionary 
But one day he came to the missionary's study with a 
radiant countenance, exclaiming as he entered : " I know 
it ! I know it ! I know that Jesus can save me from my 
sins ; for he has done it ! " 

One day he came and said : '' I don't want to 
smoke opium any more ; I don't want to do any of the evil 
things I have been doing ; but I want to go and tell the 
people of Hok-chiang that Jesus can save them from their 
sins." When his friends heard of his purpose, they tried to 
dissuade him. sayings '* Don't go down there ; the people 



CHINESE CONVERTS. 39 

are fighting all the time ; they will soon take your head, 
off, and that will stop your preaching. If you will preach 
the ^foreign doctrine/ stay here at Foochow and preach it 
where you will be safe." But he replied, ^^ No, I must go 
to Hok-chiang. The people there need the Gospel, and 
they are my people. I came from there and I must go 
there and tell them about Jesus." 

There was no time for a theological course or for theo- 
logical training. He went out with the word of God in his 
hand, and the experience of his Saviour's love in his heart. 
His simple message to the people everywhere was, "Jesus 
can save you from all your sins ; I know it, for he has 
saved me from mine ! " He suffered much persecution — 
stoned in one place, pelted with mud in another, beaten 
in another, he pressed on with indomitable energy, pro- 
claiming everywhere his simple message of salvation. 
Many listened to his earnest words and became followers 
of Christ. 

After a time he was caught by his enemies in the city of 
Hok-chiang, and brought before the district magistrate, 
with false charges against him, and false witnesses to 
testify to them ; and the too-willing heathen magistrate 
sentenced him to be beaten with two thousand stripes. 
This cruel sentence was executed with the bamboo upon 
the bare back of the victim. I well remember the day he 
was brought to our Mission premises, apparently almost 
dead. I well remember the sorrowful countenance of our 
good Scotch physician, as he came out of the room after 
examining his patient, and said, *^ I don't think we can 
save him. I never saw such terrible injuries from beating. 
The flesh on his back is like quivering jelly. But we will 
do our best to save him." I remember how I thought over 
some of the comforting words of Jesus, as I made my way 
toward the room, that I might try to comfort my brother 
in his great distress ; and I remember, too, the smile with 
which he greeted me, and how he, speaking first, before I 
had a chance to say anything, said : ^* Teacher, this poor 
body is in great pain just now ; but my inside heart has 
great peace. Jesus is with me ; and I think perhaps He 
will take me to heaven, and I will be glad to go." And 



40 CHINA. 



then I could see the old fire flashing again in his eyes, as 
with effort he raised himself a little from his bed, and said, 
" But if I get up from this, you'll let me go back to 
Hok-chiang, won't you ? " 

He was in a precarious condition for some time, but 
soon began to mend ; and before the missionaries thought 
he ought to leave the premises, he was off again to Hok- 
chiang, preaching to the very men who had persecuted 
him, and with such effect that some of them were con- 
verted and became members of our church in that city. 

He continued to preach with much energy and success 
for a period of fourteen years. He was ordained by Bishop 
Kingsley, in 1869. Soon after he was appointed to Teng- 
tiong in 1876, finding himself very ill, he went to his 
native island of Lam-yit, hoping to improve in the sea 
breezes, and under the care of physicians there. But 
when, after some weeks, they told him that his case was 
hopeless, and that he could not live many weeks, he said : 
"Then I must go back to my station. I only came here 
in hope of getting well, so as to do longer service ; but if 
I cannot, then I want to go where my work is, and die at 
my post." So, in his feebleness, he made his way back to 
Teng-tiong ; and when he could no longer stand to preach, 
he sat down, gathered the Christians close around him, and 
talked to them of the love of Jesus, and his power to save 
from sin. 

While on one of the islands off the coast he preached 
earnestly. A number of the poor islanders were soon 
added to the Church. Among the inquirers was a man 
who had been a wicked pirate. He came to Ching Ting 
saying that he was convinced that the religion he preached 
was true, and he wanted to be a Christian. He would 
immediately give up his piracy ; but there was one little 
thing he thought he would hold on to. Said he, "You 
know that some time ago we made a covenant with the 
fishermen here, by which we agreed to leave their nets 
alone at all times except the ist and 15th of each month, 
and they agreed that we should have all the fish we should 



as ■ 



CHINESE CONVERTS, 41 

find in them on those days. Now that is an agreement 
between us, and I think it will be right for me to continue 
to take the fish/' Ching Ting thought that the man was 
being led by the Spirit, and not wishing to discourage him, 
he expressed no opinion about his taking the fish, he said : 
"Well, I'll put your name right down as a probationer in 
the M. E. Church, and I will pray God to lead you into 
the right, about all things." So we had a probationer in 
the M. E. Church who was purposing to steal fish twice a 
month from the poor fishermen. He could not have done 
it more than once, however, after this, for about three 
weeks after that time he came to Ching Ting, and said 
with tears, "Oh, Ching Ting, this fish business is all wrong, 
too. It is stealing from the poor fishermen. I must give 
it up, I want to be a whole-hearted Christian , and you 
must pray for me and help me to be one." So this great 
burly pirate became a humble servant of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. The work spread southward from Hok-Chiang 
through the Prefecture of Hing-Hwa where there are 
now five hundred communicants in the M. E. Church. Ling 
Ching Ting died in good ministerial standing in 1877. 

6. One day a mandarin entered the shop of an old 
cloth merchant, a convert in the Amoy region where the 
English Presbyterians were labormg. The old man 
surmised their intention to oppress and persecute him. 
"I know what you have come for,*' said he, and taking 
down some of the goods, pointed to them and to the rest 
in the shop and said, " Take them and take me also. I am 
an old man and very deaf. You may take my boys also 
and my little girl. We are all Christians and willing to go 
to prison." This man was amongst the first converts of 
the mission which numbers more than seventy stations and 
3,312 communicants. 



42 CHINA. 

7. When tne Methodist chapel at Ing Ching was dam- 
aged by a mob in 1878, the government awarded one native 
Christian 30,000 ^'^ cash'' on account of physical injuries, 
but he declined to take it as he did not wish to appear to 
receive money-compensation for his persecution for Christ's 
sake. *^They can cut off our heads,*' said some grave 
(^hristians to Rev. Mr. Stevenson, ^' but they cannot behead 
Christ." 

8. Ling Seng-Ki is a steward in the Methodist circuit 
of Hung-ting. On a Sunday evening in March, 1878, 
when returning home from church, he was waylaid by three 
men of the village, close by his house. They took him to 
the house of one of them, where they gave him supper, 
then deliberately led him to the newly repaired temple, for 
which he had refused to give aid, and there, in the 
presence of over twenty villagers, his hands were tied 
with a cord behind his back, a rope was then attached to 
this cord and passed over a beam, by which he was drawn 
up a foot or more from the ground, and thus suspended in 
excruciating torture for more than an hour. He prayed 
aloud for his persecutors. They continued to demand c:. 
him pledges of money. He finally said, " If you want my 
little property, take it ; if you want my life, that, too, is in 
your power." Then they let him down. They did take 
his property to the amount of half his little all. "I saw 
r^rother Ling a month afterward, happy in the love of 
Jesus and no words of bitterness against his persecutors," 
writes the missionary. 

9. Another account lies before us, of a Chinese woman 
who describes her husband's state of mind, while under 
conviction for sin, thus : 

" In the eighth year of the Emperor Lung Tai (19 years 
ago) first month, twelfth night, I saw my husband in a very 



GENUINENESS OE THE WORK. 43 

Wunderful condition. He would cry, then kneel down, get 
up again then kneel down again, and so for a long time. 
Then suddenly he seemed very happy. I did not seem to 
understand the business at alL Afterwards I saw he was 
very much changed from what he was before. Seeing this 
I was very glad, but I could not understand why or how 
he had been changed." She adds a word about herself : 
"When I saw him reading a book of hymns I read it with 
him ; also the colloquial New Testament. Then I quickly 
understood the whole by heart, and my heart was very 
glad and greatly rejoiced to receive the Doctrine Preacher, 
and trusted him to teach me how to be saved, how to 
believe and trust and how to hope for heaven's happiness. 
The Holy Spirit made it plain to me." 

Genuineness of the Work. — The Chinese converts are 
mostly poor, but the genuineness of the work is shown by 
their contributions to it. At the Shanghai conference. Dr. 
Yates said in 1876 the contributions averaged $3.50 per 
head, though probably one-half gave nothing. Native 
Christians contributed in 1876, $10,000 for Christian 
objects; in 1886, $12,874, and in 1890, $37,000. Dr. 
Sheffield said at the Ecumenical Conference in New York 
that at the Pekin University in ten years they had gradu- 
ated twenty-eight students, all of whom studied English, 
and were prepared for business, and could have entered 
business at a salary of about 15 oz. of silver a month for 
the first year, 20 oz. a month for the second year, and 25 
oz. a month for the third year. Some of them were offered 
much better salaries. But twenty out of the twenty-eight 
preferred to enter the church to preach or teach the gospel, 
some of them on a salary of three ounces of silver a month — 
about two dollars in gold — with the chance of making $20 
or $30 besides, and some entered the church to preach or 
teach at five ounces of silver a month — less than four 
dollars per month, even when thev Vnew they would be 
persecuted. 



44 CHINA. 

Dr. Legge, after forty years of missionary service in 
China, acknowledges the failings and peculiar weaknesses 
of many Chinese Christians, but at the London conference 
said : 

^* I have been by the bedside of men and women who 
have died in Christian peace and hope. I have heard men 
who had at one time been great criminals and afterward 
lived good lives, comforting with their latest breath, and 
stimulating their friends who stood weeping around. I 
have known not a few who took submissively their spoiling 
of their goods because of their faith. I knew well one 
who sealed his Christian profession with his blood, and 
died a faithful martyr. Yes, the converts are real.'* 

Rev. George Smith, missionary of the English Presby- 
terian mission, thinks that : 

" Some of these women, in regard to faith and zeal and 
patience and self-denial, might take their places beside of 
the most honored sisters at home. Many of them, by 
enduring persecution and risking their lives unto death, 
.ave won triumphs for the gospel in villages and towns 
where it would have been unsafe for man to enter at first." 

Rev. C. F. Turner also at the London Conference, said : 

" I have worked with Chinese Christians who have borne 
;n their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus ; men with 
great burnt scars on their bodies, where they had endured 
the tortures of fire, in the service of the gospel. I have 
trodden in the footsteps of a Chinese martyr who laid 
down his life for the Lord Jesus, and I have looked upon 
the spot where they cast his corpse into the river. 

Advantages and Helps. — Rev. Dr. Williamson pointed 
out some while ago, in Evangelical Christendom^ that there 
is a providential preparation in China for the reception 
and spread of the Gospel. 

I. There is an educational preparation. They say : 
" The mind is the man." The competitive examinations 
have quickened the intellect of China. This gave rise to 



ADVANTAGES AND HELPS. 45 

schools. Hence the large percentage of readers. Then 
there is one written language for the whole empire. There 
is a social preparation. Through the observance of filial 
obligation has trained the nation to subordination to law 
and order. There is no communism nor nihilism here. 
Vivine authority can be easily taught. 

3. There is a moral preparation. The heart is recog- 
nized as the seat of morals. Benevolence is urged in every 
form and righteousness too. The doctrine of mediation 
is recognized. 

4. They have some knowledge of a true and living God 
a power on whom country, family and individual prosper- 

ity depends. 

5. They possess an implied knowledge of immortality. 
Their emperors never die, they ascend. 

Mr. Hudson Taylor has pointed out the significant fact 
that the physical conformation of China is favorable to 
this. To the west of the 12th degree of longitude the 
country is mountainous and therefore less densely popu- 
lated than the more easily accessible regions on the east 
of the line. The geographical center of the country is 
not the center of population. ► Divide the eighteen prov 
inces equally at no degrees east longitude, and only one- 
fifth of the population will be found west of that parallel. 
We have access to the whole seaboard, and four-fifths, or 
320 millions of the population lie in that half of the coun- 
try. Divide the country laterally by the 30th degree of 
latitude and the northern half is the more healthy, and 
contains nearly double the population of the southern half 
of the territory. Thus the health conditions are favorable 
for reaching the greatest number, as one-half the people 
are in one-quarter of the territory, and that the most salu- 
brious prrt. 



40 CHINA. 

It has been, over and over, pointed out that the written 

language affords great facility for communication with all 
the people of the empire. It is not so difficult of acquisi- 
tion as was formerly supposed. Mr. Wesley is reported to 
have said that " the devil invented the Chinese language 
to keep the gospel out of China," but nothing facilitates 
irs spread more than this. It has been generally supposed 
that the Chinese language has 80,000 separate characters 
of which the dictionary of Kawghi explains about 40,000, 
but the number met with in books is only about 5,000. 
The spoken languages vary with every province, and 
except where missionaries have reduced them to writing, 
are as a rule unwritten, while the written language is uni- 
versal throughout the empire, but is unspoken. Though 
a Canton and a Foo Chow man cannot understand each 
other's speech, they will each know what the other writes, 
as a Frenchman, a German, and an Englishman would 
know the written Arabic numerals though not each other's 
words for them. 

The written language is greatly venerated. The cloth- 
ing, chopsticks, fans, vases, cabinets, and almost everything 
belonging to the Chinese are decorated with the written 
character. It is intelligible not only to scholars, but to 
shop-keepers and dealers throughout the eighteen provinces 
as well as to all Chinamen in Manchuria, Mongolia, Thibet, 
Korea, Japan, Cambodia, and in the islands of the sea. 

The water communications afford a highway to every 
province of China. Rev. Mr. Knowlton points out the 
auxiliary facilities of the clanship of families and the cus- 
tom of living together in villages and cities ; the social 
habits contributing to the communication by one to others 
what is heard; the settled habits of the people; the similar- 
ity of characteristics, so that objections met and hindrances 



ADVANTAGES AND HELPS, 47 

dealt with in one part ot the country, by any set of argu- 
ments may be so dealt with in other parts, the experience 
in one place being thus useful in all. Protection is afforded. 

Amongst the specially favorable things, there is the 
fact that the people's confidence in their religious systems 
was disturbed by the Taiping rebellion. " The idol- 
destroying rebels ever worsted the idol-worshipping 
imperialists, ever subdued the idol-trusting masses," and 
the rebels who broke down temples, drove out priests 
and made widows and orphans were only subdued by 
the aid of "Foreign Devils." This was a terrible stroke 
to the prestige of the idolatrous systems of China. The 
same British guns which had broken the sea-rampart of 
China had to preserve the " Son of Heaven " at Peking, 
from insurgents who for fourteen years had despised 
China's religions. In the province of Canton alone this 
rebellion was quelled at the cost of half a million of 
lives, 80,000 of which perished by the sword of the 
executioner. All this has made a deep impression upon 
the national mind. 

We have read of the favorable disposition of the 
people of North China superinduced through famine. 
The Chinese have a natural distrust for foreigners, and 
this has been greatly increased by the course of Great 
Britain in the matter of the opium traffic. The disinter- 
ested benevolence of foreigners in the late famine which 
swept off five millions of people had a good effect. At 
first they met the movement with distrust. Rev. A. H. 
Smith, writing of Shantung, one of the fanzine-stricken 
provinces, says of the people : 

At first they were too much famished and too bewil- 
dered to do more than open their mouths. They ate and 
were silent. But by degrees they began to talk, and the 



48 CHINA. 

theories advanced were unique. Some said that it was 
the deeply laid plan of these foreigners to purchase land, 
when it was to be had for next to nothing, and thus, 
gradually introducing the thin edge of a wedge, to usurp 
the land after the manner of the Egyptian Joseph, others 
supposed that the whole population — men, women and 
children — were to be removed to Tien-tsin, and perhaps 
to foreign parts, where they were to be employed accord- 
ing to their capacities, as teachers, artisans and servants, 
perpetual bondservants of their farsighted benefactors. 
But as month after month elapsed, and no land was sold, 
and no one was deported, this theory was abandoned, 
and many came to the conclusion that the relief was 
really some form of the practice of virtue, of which in 
China we hear so much and see so little. 

It was in this province, too, that since the famine, a 
Buddhist temple was given to the missionaries of the 
American Board for Christian uses. This did not occur 
till the pressure of famine was over, and the people were 
in the midst of a plentiful harvest. The deed of gift 
was drawn up at a feast, at which the temple-keeper, the 
eighteen managers of the temple, and the missionary 
were present. *^ Here," says the missionary, "was an 
absolutely heathen gathering, in a heathen town, voting 
away their temple and its lands to a foreign religion, of 
which most of them had never heard six months ago, 
and none of them until within a few years. They did il 
of their own motion, and without solicitation on our 
part." The deed runs thus : 

The authors of this document, to wit, the whole body 
of managers (of the temple), together with the whole 
body of villagers, deliberating in a public capacity, volun- 
tarily agree to make over the temple buildings to the 
church of Christ, for the purpose of fitting up a meeting- 
house, in order to the public preaching of the sacred 
doctrine, and for the purpose of establishing a public 
school, that the youth of the village may become virtuous, 
a benefit to future generations. 



ADVANTAGES AND HELPS. 49 

Another incident is recorded. Rev. Albert Whiting of 
the American Presbyterian mission, fell a victim to famine 
fever, in this very province of Shan-Si. His body was 
enclosed in a strong coffin until his wife and friends should 
be communicated with, and their desires ascertained as to 
its disposal. Their message was that he should be buried 
where he fell. Mr. Richard accordingly sought to pur- 
chase a piece of ground for the grave. Before the pur- 
chase was completed, he communicated with the governor 
of the province, as foreigners have no legal right to hold 
land in the interior. The first answer was an order for 
400 taels (about ^130) on the public treasury. The 
order was accompanied with an intimation that as Mr. 
Whiting had died in the service of the suffering Chinese, 
the least that the province could do to show its gratitude 
was to bear the expense of sending his body home to 
America. The governor, of course, thought that what is 
so dear to a Chinaman — namely, to be buried beside hif 
ancestors — must be equally dear to a foreigner. On Mr. 
Richard explaining the Christian feeling in this matter, 
and the express desire of Mr. Whiting's friends that he 
should be buried at Tai-yuen-fu, the governor insisted 
that in that case all expenses connected with the purchase 
of the land should be borne by the treasury. 

At the funeral, twelve Chinese carried the coffin to the 
grave. A short service was held there, and at its close 
one of the Chinese came forward, saying to the foreign 
missionaries present : " Since you have shown your 
respect to Mr. Whiting, who has lost his life in seeking our 
good, let us pay our respect." Mr. James, of the China 
Inland mission, adds : " Before we had time to stop him, 
he had suited the action to the word, and was down on 
his knees before the grave ; the others would have done 



so CHINA. 

the same had we not restrained them, and more fully 
explained our meaning." 

A native Chinese paper of Shanghai, that has been an 
opponent of Christianity, closes an article in which it 
speaks of the missionaries' work during the famine thus : 

** Let us then cherish a grateful admiration for the 
charity and wide benevolence of the missionary whose 
sacrifice of self, and love toward mankind can be carried 
out with earnestness like this. Let us applaud too, the 
mysterious efficacy and activity of the doctrine of Jesus of 
which we have these proofs. We record the same in 
wricing for the information of all noble minded within the 
seas." 

" A dozen wars," says an eminent authority, " would 
not have so much to open China as the ministrations to 
their relief have done." 

Encouragements to Renewed Efforts. — The encourage- 
ments are not small. A native preacher at Ningpo writes: 

As to the fact that the doctrine is beginning to strike 
root here, there are several signs, (i.) The hearts of the 
people are turned. Formerly they looked on the "doctrine" 
as bad, and the preachers as wicked men, who either 
wanted to entrap men, or spoil them of their goods, or 
swallow up their houses and kingdom, whence arose many 
bad and false reports ; now most men praise the doctrine 
and its preachers. (2.) Formerly the converts were all of 
the lowest class ; now there are also some from among the 
literati and gentry. (3.) There is much less persecution. 
Formerly those who entered the religion were looked upon 
as scarcely human ; now, although, alas ! there is still 
hatred, yet Christians are no longer looked upon as brutes. 
(4.) False religions are decaying. Formerly the Buddhist 
religion was very powerful ; now the magistrates hate, and 
are trying to suppress it; the convents and monasteries are 
being turned into free schools, and other public offices. 
The Taoist and Buddhist religion are alike; the Buddhist 
having fallen, the Taoist will also fall, whence we may 
know that Christianity is beginning to flourish. 



MISS ION A R V RESUL TS AND PROSPECTS. 51 

Missionary Results and Prospects. — At the Shanghai 
Conference, May, 1877, the number of communicants in 
the several missions of China was reported at 13,033, and 
the Christian community estimated at 40,000. The 
Shanghai Conference of 1890, returns 31,000 communicants 
and 100,000 native Christians. This represents the gain for 
about forty -five years, as work was only fairly begun in 1842 
when China first became open for resident missionaries at 
the treaty ports. But it does not indicate the present ratio 
of increase. The conversions in 1878 were more than 
those of the whole five years previous. 

The statistics compiled by Rev. Harlan P. Beach gave 
the number of communicants for 1900 at 80,682, as care- 
fully enrolled in fifty-four separate protestant missionary 
societies operating in China. There were then 2,461 
foreign workers in these missions, with 5,071 native 
Christian mission agents. There were over 30,000 pupils 
in day schools and 5,000 in the schools of higher learning. 

Obstacles and Difficulties. — i. To the heathen becoming 
Christians. No one can state the case of the Chinese better 
than the Chinese, and so we let a native Chinese Christian 
minister state the point of the difficulties of the native 
Chinaman in learning about Christianity. 

Rev. Y. K. Yen, speaking at the Shanghai Conference, 
said : 

*^We must understand the peculiar character of the 
Chinese, (i) They have hazy ideas about gods. A Chinese 
who went to the United States was written to by his father 
that his sixth mother was well. What can a man who has 
six mothers know of a mother's love? (2) The Chinese 
have hazy ideas about sin, which they confound with 
crime, treading on one's toes, being late to dinner — the 
same character for all. (3) They have hazy ideas about a 



52 CHINA. 

future lite. At a Chinese death-bed there Is never a word 
about future happiness, but only about mourning and 
money. If they did not think the gods could affect men's 
bodies the temples would be deserted and ancestral worship 
would decline. They are not to blame. It is their misfor- 
tune and not their fault. The Chinese cannot see Christian- 
ity as we see it." 

2. To native Christians. This same Christian native, 
already quoted (Rev. Y. K. Yen), said again at the great 
missionary conference last year, some very sensible things 
about the difficulties to the mission work growing out of 
the conservatism of the Chinese. He said : 

** The Chinese Christians are not in the same favorable 
circumstances as Christians in other lands. The former 
have fifty generations of heathenism behind them. They 
have much to contend with. We should not expect the 
same enterprise, activity and piety as from foreigners. 
Missionaries often speak disparagingly of Chinese 
Christians. This, considering the circumstances, is 
unreasonable and unjust. Western civilization is marked 
by diversity. Eastern civilization by uniformity. Chinese 
are not active physically, morally and spiritually. If I 
were active physically I should not have this queue to-day. 
If any other Chinese would cut off his hair and shorten his 
skirts I would do so too. They have a load upon them. 
All Chinese worship is for selfishness. They have no 
knowledge of God ; no recognition of being His sons. 

** A single province of hers converted would be equal to 
the conversion of whole nations elsewhere. Convert any 
one of her eighteen provinces and you would have more 
than all Brazil and Mexico. Any one of a dozen of her 
provinces would be more than the conversion of all Italy. 
As goes China, so goes Asia. She is to-day the citadel of 
paganism. Secure her to Christ, and you secure all her 
dependencies, as Thibet, Turkistan, Mongolia, Manchuria 
and Korea. Break down her idols and you dethrone- the 
greater part of heathenism at a stroke ! " 



THE CRISIS Op ic^oo, 53 

THE CRISIS OF 1900. 

It is quite certain that many causes have contributed to 
rouse grave apprehensions in the minds of the Chinese for 
the integrity of their government, their natural resources 
and their social and religious usages. 

The Manchu dynasty sought from the first to exclude all 
foreigners. It was only after the Opium war that the first 
five ports were opened. When a British officer named 
Margary was murdered in the western provinces, ports on 
the Yangtse were opened as an indemnity. The right of 
foreign ministers to reside in Peking was obtained by force. 
For two centuries and a-half this exclusive policy has been 
maintained. The western powers, except the United 
States, have forced all concessions from China by the 
"gun-boat policy." In 1884 a French fleet entered the 
Min river to frighten the Peking government into paying 
an indemnity for alleged aid of Chinese in Tonquin against 
the French seizure of that country. Later came the Japan 
war, in which China was humiliated by **a nation of 
dwarfs", her navy practically driven from the seas, her 
suzerainty over Korea lost, the Laou Chow peninsula given 
to Japan, her great forts leased to other powers and two-hun- 
dred million dollars indemnity had to be paid. Up to 
the year 1897 the province of Shantung had been 
tolerant of foreigners and kindly toward native Christians. 
A riot occurred in which two German (Catholic) mission- 
aries were killed. A fortnight later the German admiral 
landed troops at Kiao Chow and demanded the cession of 
the territory already seized, the Bay of Kiao Chow and 
two railway and mining concessions. 

The bitter feeling created by this action was intensified 
by the Imperial decree (March 15, 1899), demanded by 
France, that the Roman Catholic bishops and missionaries 



54 CHINA. 

be given civil power to establish courts for Roman Cath- 
olic converts, and rank equal to that of provincial judges 
taotais and prefects. Thus the coast defense had been 
destroyed, territory had been seized, and now a segment of 
civil jurisdiction over a half-million Chinese subjects was 
handed over to the control of foreigners, with possible 
unlimited extension to other nationals under the " most 
favored nation " clause. 

It is little wonder that a bitter anti-foreign spirit should 
manifest itself. All things foreign came under the ban of 
the conservatives. In all parts of the empire disaffection 
became rife, and the President of the Tsung-li-Yamen, and 
a half-dozen of the viceroys declared their inability to 
protect foreigners. Outrages were perpetrated against 
foreigners without distinction of nationality, class or office. 
Above Hankow they sacked the Japanese Consulate and 
the Swedish mission. An officer of the British Legation, 
chief engineer of the Imperial railway, was assaulted and 
left in a bleeding condition. In Yunan the French Con- 
sulate was plundered. The foreigners operating silver 
mines were frequently mobbed. All who were allied with 
foreigners as native Christians or employees came under 
ban. 

A riotous mob of 8,000 in Szechuen (West China) in 1899 
sought to drive out all the « foreign devils." In Kwangsi 
(the extreme south) 7,000 organized rioters rose up to expel 
" the foreign dogs. " One, Chang, called together 300 philo- 
sophical scholars, 3,000 military officers, and 30,000 brave 
soldiers, and held rebellious sway for months. Father 
Fleury, a Roman Catholic priest, was taken from place to 
place, that Christians might be murdered at his feet. Shun- 
ching, Hoochow, Kweifu, Kiangpeh, were all subjects of 
riotous demonstrations against the missionaries as « foreign 



THE CRISIS OF ipoo. 55 

dogs." In Kuichow, Mr. Fleming, of the China Inland 
Mission, and his evangelist, were deliberately murdered. 
On the Yangtse the rioting was directed against the Roman 
Catholics, with the cry ^' Destroy the foreigners ! " Later 
came the massacre of Roman Catholic missionaries in the 
north, and of the Church of England, near Foochow, under 
the cry, ^' Rise and kill every foreigner ! " 

These demonstrations occurred in twelve out of the 
eighteen provinces ; they were made against all classes of 
foreigners. Of the attacks on missionaries, the greater pro- 
portion were made against Roman Catholics. Thus it does 
not appear that these riots have arisen from antagonism to 
missionaries as such, though the prejudices and fears of a 
superstitious people have been appealed to, under charges 
that they killed children to make medicine out of their 
eyes, just as they attacked engineers because railway 
levels disturbed their ancestors and fengshui. The Man- 
darins have antagonized missionaries on political grounds. 
The Buddhists have shown some antagonism at times on 
religious grounds, ascribing the drouth to the neglect of 
the gods, to the tolerance of foreigners' residence and to 
native Christians abandoning the worship of ancestors. 
It was chiefly as foreigners that the missionaries were 
included in the revolt. Hon. Mr. Denby says, ** The in- 
cidents of riots in the past do not indicate a general 
antagonism among the people to missionary work." He 
says that missions have been established all over that great 
empire, many of them in most isolated and unprotected 
places, and disaster has come to comparatively few of them. 
The missionary penetrates the interior where the merchant 
does not; in some instances small towns have been laid out 
by them. They constitute nearly one-third of the foreign 
population of the empire. 



S6 CHINA, 

The Boxer s.— China has numerous secret societies in all 
parts of the empire. They are all more or less available 
for revolt. The province of Shantung, where the Boxers 
first publicly made their demonstration, is honeycombed 
with secret societies. The Boxers are a patriotic society 
whose origin it is difficult to trace. It was not till 1899 
that they attracted attention by depredations against 
foreigners. Until then t hey gave no trouble to missionaries 
or other foreigners, or to native Christians. That they 
came to be in favor with the Empress Dowager and the 
conservative element is conceded. That the Imperial 
troops, sent ostensibly to suppress their revolt against 
foreigners, joined their ranks according to a pre-concerted 
plan of the government to drive foreigners out of the land, 
and to offer to native Christians the alternative of apostasy 
or death, seems well established. 

It is estimated that 10,000 Roman Catholic and 4,000 
Protestant native Christians were put to death. By a word 
they could have saved their lives, but they gave themselves 
to suffer cruelties and death in their constancy to Christ. 

The Reform Movement. — China's war with Japan pro- 
duced a wide-spread conviction amongst a great number 
of Chinese, that preservation of the empire could only be 
secured by following the example of Japan and adopting 
many parts of western civilized life. 

The young Emperor, just come to the throne, championed 
reform. Peking was to have a University modelled after 
that at Tokyo. Great schools of agriculture, engineering 
and medicine were projected. Reformation in the national 
Budget of Taxes ; reduction of expense of the six Boards 
of Ceremony ; pushing of railroads ; western arms for 
Tartar troops ; patent and copyright laws, were among 



THE MISSIONAR Y FUTURE, 57 

the features of proposed national reform. The Reform 
party included some of the ablest men of the empire. 

This reform movement cannot be long suppressed. Its 
greatest importance is that it shows that the watershed of 
China's future lies with the Chinese themselves. 

The Missionary Future. — Rev. Dr. Judson Smith forcibly 
uttered the feelmg of all missionaries respecting the 
"Boxer " demonstration when he said : — ** Unless all signs 
fail, this day of bloodshed and loss is sure to be followed 
by an immense enlargement of our missionary opportunity 
in China. And for this the churches need at once to gird 
themselves. When we went to China with the gospel it 
was to stay and to conquer ; and nothing has happened 
to change our purpose. And all the voices of earthly 
wisdom, and all the trumpets of the skies, and all the 
examples of Christian history, and all the blood of our 
martyred dead, summon us to these later and greater 
deeds until the night is gone and China is won." 

There is certain to be a New China, One of China's 
own most eminent sons prophesied, " In process of time 
a Holy One will be born who will redeem the world. The 
nations will wait for him as fading flowers desire the sum- 
mer rain. He will be born of a virgin. His name will be 
Prince of Peace, China will be visited with his glory.'* 

Let our motto be, 

CHRIST FOR CHINA, 
CHINA FOR CHRIST ! 



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6o CHINA. 



T 



ROLL OF MARTYRED MISSIONARIES IN CHINA 
IN 1900. 

Condensed from list furnished by Rev. John R. Hykes, Shanghai, China, published 
m the Missionary Review of the World, Dec, 1900. 

American Board (Congregational) Mission. — Rev. H. T. 
Pitkin, Miss A. A. Gould, Miss M. S. Morrill, Rev. and Mrs. D. 
H. Clapp (one child), Rev. G. L. Williams, Rev. F. W. Davis, 
Miss R. Bird, Miss M. L. Partridge, Rev. and Mrs. E. R. Atwater 
(two children), Rev. and Mrs. C. W. Price (one child). (Two 
children of Mr. Atwater were previously killed.) 

American Presbyterian. — Rev. and Mrs. F. E. Simcox 
(three children), C. V. R. Hodge, M. D., and Mrs Hodge ; G. Y. 
Taylor, M. D. 

Christian Missionary Alliance. — Mr, and Mrs. O. 
Bingmerk. 

China Inland Mission.— Rev. and Mrs. B. Bagnall (one 
child), Rev. William Cooper, Miss Whitchurch, Miss Searell, 
Rev. and Mrs. G. McConnell (one child), Miss King, Miss Burton, 
Rev. and Mrs. D. B. Thompson (two children) Miss Desmond, 
Miss Manchester, Rev. and Mrs. G. F. Ward (one child), Miss 
Sherwood, Miss T. Thirgood, Miss Rice, Mr. Saunders* children, 
Isabella and Jessie, Mrs. E. J. Cooper (one child). Miss Huston, 
two of Mr. Lutley's children. Rev. and Mrs. A. P. Lundgren, 
Miss Eldrid, Dr. and Mrs. Miller Wilson (one child), Miss J. 
Stevens, Miss M. E. Clark. 

Church of England Mission. — Rev. S. M. Brooks, Rev. 
H. V. Norman, Rev. C. Robinson. 

English Baptist Mission. — Rev. and Mrs. G. E. Farthing 
(two children). Miss Stewart, Rev. and Mrs. T. J. Underwood, 
Rev. and Mrs. Whitehouse. 

Independent Baptist Mission. — Miss Coombs. 

Sheo-Yang Mission.— Dr. and Mrs. Lovitt (one child), Rev. 
and Mrs. C. W. Stokes, Rev. and Mrs. J. Simpson, Rev. A. J. 
Hoddle, Miss Duval, Rev. and Mrs. W. W. Pigott. 

British and Foreign Bible Society. — Mr. and Mrs, W, 
E. Beynon (three children). 

There are others entered as '* missing." 



CHINA, 6 1 

CHINESE PROTESTANT CENTENNIAL, 

A mass meeting held in Kuling China, August 7, 1903, 
had for its central thought a three years' enterprise looking 
to the celebration by some fitting movement of the Chinese 
Protestant Centenary Year, 1907. 

From this meeting went out an appeal to all Protestant 
Christendom throughout the world to join them in thanks- 
giving, confession and prayer ; the special object of prayer 
being that they may get re-enforcement all along the line 
The proposition is to secure 

IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS 

A large increase of members. 

More Chinese workers. 

Double the present Missionary Force. 

NATIONAL MEMORIAL TO CHRISTIAN MARTYRS 
IN ALL CHINA. 

A movement was inaugurated at Shanghai, July i, 1903, 
looking to a proper memorial of the Protestant Martyrs of 
all China. The form of Memorial suggested is a great 
Connexional building at Shanghai. 

This will commemorate the martyrs and perpetuate their 
testimony. It will be a perpetual witness to the world 
that China has a martyr church. The essential unity of 
the Christian Church will manifest itself in this united 
effort as a concrete example of how to honor the dead and 
bless the living. The Committee having it in charge are 
composed of leading ministers and laymen, such as Rt. 
Rev. Bishop Graves, Canton ; Bishop David H. Moore, 
Shanghai; Griffith John Timothy Richards; Young J. 
Allen, A. P. Parker, and others. 

The Circular about which the movement at present is 
materializing reads in part as follows : — 



62 CHINESE PROTESTANT CENTENNIAL. 

TENTATIVE SCHEME FOR A MARTYR*S MEMORIAL IN CHINA. 

Preliminary^ It has been in the minds of many for 
some time that there should be some appropriate National 
Memorial to perpetuate the memory of the Christian 
martyrs of the Protestant Missions who have fallen in 
China, in the service of Christ and His Church, during the 
last century, but more especially in memory of those who 
were faithful unto death during the terrible storm of 1900, 
It is now proposed to erect in Shanghai a large building 
which shall serve in many ways the cause for which the 
martyrs died. A worthy monument in a public spot might 
be sufficient as a local memorial, and may yet be erected 
in Shanghai, but in addition to the numerous local memor- 
ials to the martyrs, both at home and in China, it is felt 
that the widespread character of the martyrdoms of 1900 
calls for something greater. The fact that Memorial 
Churches, Colleges and Halls are scattered up and down 
in all lands, is sufficient indication of the unanimous judg- 
ment of the Christian world that such buildings are the 
best way of commemorating the dead. 



We believe that this is the most fruitful and sensible 
way of commemorating the martyrs and perpetuating their 
testimony, * * * The project too happily synchronizes with 
the approaching Centenary of Protestant Missions in 
China. * * * It will commemorate the first hundred years 
of missionary work in China. 

China is rapidly opening up, and missionary work and 
the growth of the native church is keeping pace with 
advance along other lines. Hence some such building is 
necessary as an Exeter Hall for China, to accommodate 
the union meetings of Chinese Christians, the great 
national conference and other religious gatherings which 
cannot now be accommodated in any other building open 
to the Chinese. It will also be a great advantage to have 
the various sister societies grouped in one common build- 
ing. These at present hold a precarious tenure of rented 
buildings, and could be given 2. permanent home at a proper 
rental sufficient for the upkeep of the building. 



^MANCHURIA 



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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



CoLQUHOUN, A. R. — China in Transformation. Harper and Brothers, New York. 
CoLQUHOUN, A. B.— The Mastery of the Pacific. MacMillan Co., New York 

DooLiTTLE, Justus— Social Life of the Chinese. Harper and Brothers, New York. 
Davis, J. A. — Chinese Slave Girl, a Story of Woman's Life in China. 

Presbyterian Board of Missions. 
Davis, J. A. — Lang Tso, The Chinese Bible Woman, a sequel to the Chinese Slave 
Girl. Presbyterian Board of Missions. 

Douglas, R. K. — China. Putnam, New York. 

Douglas, R. K. — Society in China. London. 

Edkins, Joseph — Religion in China. James R. Osgood and Com.pany, Boston. 
FiELDE, Adele M. — Pagoda Shadows. Baptist Publication Society, Boston. 

Gracey, Mrs. J. T. — Eminent Missionary Women. Eaton and Mains, New York. 
Gray, W. J. H. — China, Laws, Manners, Custom, 2 vols. MacMillan Co., 

New York. 
Hart, Virgil C. — Western China. Ticknor & Co , Boston. 

HoLCOMBE, Chester— The Real Chinaman. Dodd & Mead, New York. 

Legge, James — The Religions of China. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. 

Lewis, R. E.— The Educational Conquest in the Far East. Revell Co.. New York. 
Martin, W. A. P.— A Cycle of Cathay. Revell Co., New York. 

Martin, W. A. P. — The Chinese. Harper and Brothers, New York. 

Miner, Luella — Two Heroes of Cathay. Revell Co., New York. 

McNabb — The Women of the Middle Kingdom. Jennings and Pye, Cincinnatti. 
Nevius, J. L. — China and the Chinese. Presbyterian Board of Publication. 

RoBSON, W.— Griffith John ; Founder Han Kow Mission. Revell Co., New York. 
Stafford, Miss A. C. — Typical Women of China. (Translation from Chinese 
Work.) The Worth Co., Wilmington, North Carolina. 
Smith, Arthur H. — China in Convulsion, 2 vols. Revell Co., New York. 

Smith, Arthur H. — Village Life in China. Revell Co., New York. 

Smith, Arthur H. — Chinese Characteristics. Revell Co., New York. 

Smith, Arthur H.— Rex Christus. MacMillan & Co., New York. 

TowNSEND, W. J.— Robert Morrison. Revell Co., New York. 

Wilson, James H.— Chinese Travels and Investigations in the Middle Kingdom. 

Appleton & Co., New York. 
Williams, S. Wells — The Middle Kingdom. John Wiley & Sons, New York. 

li^^ Chinese Reeorder^ 34 Volumes, 



WOMAN IN CHINA. 



A wife should excel in four things: virtue, speech, person, 
needlework. 

A virtuous woman is^a source of honor to her husband, a 
vicious one disgraces him. 

A stubborn wife and a stiff necked son no law can govern. 

— Chinese Sayings, 



The character, in written^language ; for peace, is one woman 
in isolation under a roof ; that for a quarrel is two \^omen ; for 
a wife, a woman under a broom. 



It is said, the most beautiful spots in China are dedicated to 
the dead. 



*'We shall never have a nation of noble men in China till 
we have enlightened Chinese women.'* 



WOMAN IN CHINA. 



THE CHINESE WOMAN AT HOME. 

The population of China may be reckoned nearly equally 
divided between the sexes, notwithstanding the low esti- 
mate in which the birth of girls is held. A variety of 
causes contribute to the restoration of the comparative 
equilibrium. Thus it would appear that it is quite safe to 
say that the number of females, alone, in China, equals, 
twice over, the aggregate population — men, women, boys, 
girls and children — under the United States government, 
at home and abroad. 

Dowager Empress — China has had many eminent women 
some of whom have reached great political prominence 
and power. In the Tang dynasty, Empress Wu ruled 
the Empire for forty years. She was a cruel but great 
governor. The present Empress Dowager, Tszchi Toanyu 
Kanghi Chuangeheng Chinhien Chung Sih, has exercised 
imperial sway for a third of a century, or during the life 
time of an entire generation. She has no thin scarlet 
thread of royalty in her veins, but is of ** noble blood,*' 
says Dr. Martin — daughter of a Manchu soldier, governor 
at Wuhu, says Curtis. Stories of her having been a slave-girl 
are proven apocryphal. Her beauty won her admittance 
across the threshold of the Imperial palace, her capacity 
elevated her to be second wife of the Emperor, and since 
his death to be the Monarch of the Middle Kingdom. In 
stalwartness and strength of character she but symbolizes 
the solidarity of the millions of women whom she rules, 
**A Jezebel," a *^she wolf," though some have called her, 
she yet exercises a vigor as administrator to which every- 



6S CHINA. 

thing in China yields and to which the combined embassies 
of all the powers in Europe and America pay court. 

To the women of Christian countries all that is not so 
much as is the fact that she is the representative of one in 
four of all the mothers in the world. We speak of the Chin- 
ese woman as degraded — "a slave" — subordinated to the 
will of her father and husband, as a rule unlettered, and 
yet she has contrived to secure the recognition of every 
authority sacred or secular in the Empire, of the right of 
absolute obedience to her on the part of her children. By 
all the laws of the land, by all the power of custom, 
through centuries beyond record, her children have obeyed 
her while living and worshiped her after her death. This 
world will never be a christian world with China left out. 
China will never be christian without the consent and 
co-operation of the mothers of the Empire. 

Woman in Society. — Society in China is no accident. It 
has been from the first consistently developed from its 
initial principles. No nation can exist without a basis of 
ethics. Confucius but rehabilitated that on which China 
has stood from a time antedating its own centuries- 
old records. The small book of translated extracts by the 
late Miss Safford of Soochow shows how the women of 
China have been moulded by that standard of moral 
culture, and maintained it. It is only a brochure called 
*^ Typical Women of China." It demands but rewards 
patience to study it. It consists of selections from a great 
work of 313 chapters in four volumes, parts of it nearly 
two thousand years old, treating of ^* The Virtues, Words, 
Department and Employment of the women of China.** We 



*A very readable and reliable popular work just issued is The Women of the 
Middle Kingdom?' P. L. McNabb, Jennings and Pye, Cincinnati ; Eaton and 
Mains, New York, pp 160, 75c. net. 



WOMAN AND RELIGION. 69 

are told that it is read by all cultured Chinese women. It 
has furnished the ideals of the homes of the Empire 
for twenty centuries. It is the foundation, granite base of 
** manners" and Sir William Jones in his preface to the 
Code of Manu says: ** Laws without manners are of no 
avail." On the whole this outlines a quite fair condition 
of culture, though some of the noblest examples are dark 
enough. The outside world will never understand China 
without considerable acquaintance with the authority and 
models on which the conduct of its women rests. 

** In her own domestic circle," says Dr. Wells Williams 
— the most exhaustive writer introducing us to China — *' a 
Chinese female, in the character of daughter, wife or 
mother, finds as much employment, and probably as much 
enjoyment as the nature of her training has fitted her for. 
She does not hold her proper place in society, chiefly 
because she has never been taught its duties or exercised 
its privileges." [Middle Kingdom Vol. II, p. 54.] 

The peculiarities of the life of Chinese honies as it 
affects the comfort, health, protection, education of 
women, their childhood and youth, their dress, work and 
amusements, status in the home and society, betrothal, 
marriage and burial, are treated in hundreds of fragmen- 
tary sketches and in larger volumes, accessible in profu- 
sion. None of them can crush Olympus into a nutshell. 

Woman and Religion. — The women of China are the 
conservators of its religious systems. Apart from all else 
in it, Confucianism holds them by its obligation of ancestor 
worship. Having three souls, one must go iftto the 
ancestral tablet where incense, food and wine are necessary 
to it. The woman in China is willing to be a slave to her 
father, her husband, her son, if only her descendants at 



70 CHINA, 

her death will erect an ancestral tablet in the home at 
which they will offer to her sacrifices of food, burn paper, 
money and clothing to be spiritualized for her necessities, 
and offer incense to her. These tablets are the last things 
which the Chinese will yield. A writer says: **They will 
turn from Confucius, will leave their temples, will some- 
time profess Christianity, but the real test of the convert's 
truthfulness, usually comes when the ancestral tablet is 
doomed to destruction." 

She turns to Buddhism for the destiny of a second of 
her souls through transmigration. 

Dr. Nevius says the worshipers in Buddhist temples 
are for the most part women advanced in age. The young 
women are chiefly confined to their homes. It is one of 
the sad sights of Buddhist lands to witness mothers going 
about looking into the eyes of animals trying to discover 
, the image of a dead child, re-born as a beast. 

The pity of it is much the same in all Buddhist countries. 
An instance is told by a missionary surgeon of a blind old 
woman of eighty years and beyond, who came seeking from 
him *^ New Eyes." He declined to operate ; she persisted, 
saying she would sell all she possessed and give it to him; 
would endure any pain if he would give her sight but for 
five minutes. He asked her what good that would be to her. 
Her reply as the surgeon reports it was : " Son, listen ; I 
had but one son, Vou know what it means to be a widow, 
I brought the lad up in all the sorrow of widowhood, and 
now he is dead and gone. I have lost my sight in weeping 
for him. Since my lad died a grand-son has been born 
to me. I have never seen him, and I will give my all to see 
his face just once before I die." **You know," she added, 
** When I die I shall transmigrate into a cat or dog, or frog 
or whatever my fate may be, for we must pass through 



WOMAN AND RELIGION. 7 1 

many thousands of re-births. When the lad dies he will 
become a camel, a cow or somewhat else. When we have 
once passed through our present state we will never come 
into touch again. Forever and forever we are nothing to 
each other.** 

In Buddhism she finds the Goddess of Mercy a deified 
nun, a sort of Chinese equivalent for the virgin Mary in 
Romanist Countries. She has special power in deter- 
mining the sex of unborn children, and every Chinese 
woman hopes to"^ have sons. This Goddess of Mercy is 
" thousand handed " to help women. 

Taoism holds out to women the hope of "soul repose." 
"The Kitchen God " helps her in the home, a special 
goddess has; to do with bestowing boys and not girls at 
birth. In motherhood she wants the care of the Goddess 
of Midwifery, and yet another god protects her growing 
children. 

Evil Customs. — The innumerable instances of the low 
level of life which, often with the sanction of their faith, 
the women and girls of China are forced to or are content 
with, shows the inability of the religions of the land to 
elevate women to even as high a level as the glamour 
of tradition shows them to have reached in past ages when 
society was more simple. There is no hope of any resurrec- 
tion or possibility of progress to be brought from any 
resources at present within the Empire itself. It is still the 
highest ideal of excellence that to meet obligations of filial 
piety the woman shall volunteer the martyrdom of her 
virtue. 

There are cruel customs of fashion too, in which the 
woman is mercilessly held, apart from all religious obli- 
gation whatever. Foot-binding is possibly the cause of 
misery to a hundred millions of females in each succeeding 



72 CHINA. 

generation. It kills multitudes, it causes disease with tens 
of thousands, it cripples hundreds of thousands, it deforms 
and limits millions. It is not based on any known principles 
of their doctrine nor even defended as a necessary condition 
of morals. It appears to have come down from antiquity 
out of a dimly identified origin and to have been extended 
and perpetuated, only as a gigantic illustration of the 
power of custom. The Manchu Tartars do not practice it 
and the Dowager Empress perhaps would discourage it, 
but even the decree signed by the vermillion pencil of the 
Imperial palace would be powerless against it, and might 
shake the throne.* 

II.— CHRISTIAN WOMEN IN CHINA. 

Joshua Marshman is credited with having translated 
Genesis, the Gospels, Paul's Epistles to Romans and Cor- 
inthians into Chinese. He reached India 1799, Robert 
Morrison arrived in China 1807, William Milne 1813, 
H. W. Medhurst in 181 7. The first American woman 
missionary who arrived in China was Mrs. Henrietta Shuck, 
wife of Rev. J. Lewis Shuck, sent by the American Baptist 
Mission Board who reached Macao September i%i6 and 
died at Hong Kong November 27, 1844. No Protestant 
Society in the world thought of sending an unmarried 
woman as missionary to China then. In 1837 Miss Mary 
Ann Aldersey of England reached Borneo as an independ- 
ent missionary under the patronage of Dr. Medhurst. 
She did not enter China at Ningpo till 1844. She was the 
first single missionary woman to China. The first unmar- 
ried woman sent by any Missionary Society, was Miss 



°" The Record of the Women's Conference in China, Nov. 1900," held in 
Shanghai, Lady Blake presiding : Foot-binding, Betrothal of Young Children 
and Infants, Girl Slavery, Marriage and Funeral Customs. No publisher, nor 
printer nor price is given on the book. 



CHRISTIAN WOMEN IN CHINA. 73 

Lydia Mary Fay who arrived in China 1850, sent by the 
American Protestant Episcopal Church. The first unmar- 
ried ladies appointed to China for exclusive work among 
women by a missionary society were the sisters Miss 
Beulah Woolston and Miss Sarah H. Woolston of the 
American Methodist Episcopal Church who arrived in 
Foochow in 1859. (The Berlin Female Hospital in 1857 
sent Miss Ladendorff to China.) Miss Oxlade arrived in 
China in 1864, sent by the Society for Propagation of 
Female Education in the East; and this same year Miss 
Elizabeth Broxholme reached China under the English 
Wesleyan Society. In 1866 Miss Adele M. Field, Amer- 
ican Baptist, and Miss C. B. Downing, American Presby- 
terian, arrived. In 1868 the American Board Mission was 
re-enforced by Miss M. Andrews, Miss M. A. Porter and 
Miss J. S. Peet and the American Presbyterian by Miss 
H. Noyes. 

Then and now. — These comprise the total force of single 
women missionaries in China for the first sixty years after 
Morrison's arrival. At the close of 1863 there were mar- 
ried and single missionary women to the number of ninety- 
three on the field. In 1887 there were but twenty unmarried 
women missionaries to represent all the societies of 
-Christendom, except those enrolled in the China Inland 
Missionary Service which were about fifty, making the total 
list at that time seventy. The number has in the inter- 
vening fifteen years (1887- 1902) risen from seventy to 
seven hundred and eighty-three!* 

Sixty years ago no European or American woman was 
allowed to land at Canton, They were forbidden entrance 

♦Farnham's Directory of all Missionaries in China for the first eighty years. 
Shanghai, 1887. List of Protestant Missionaries in China [and Japan, i902» 
Shanghai. On sale Eaton & Mains, New York. Net, $1.00. 



74 CHINA, 

by the Chinese Authorities to land even at Macao, the 
government of which was half Portugese. Mrs. Shuck in 
1836 could land only in a foreign boat belonging to the 
ship. No Chinaman dared to carry her ashore. It was 
not till 1838 that even these Portugese ventured to admit 
foreign .women surreptitiously to the Portugese Custom 
House. In striking contrast with that is the fact that at 
the close of 1899 there were fourteen hundred foreign ladies 
in China, wholly engaged in missionary work, threading 
all parts of the Empire, often unattended by European 
men, living in safety in isolated places in the interior, and 
travelling unattended except by native Chinese. 

The force and success of this work among the women 
of China could scarcely have a better endorsement than 
the fact that as early as 187 1, when from the beginning 
over three hundred missionaries had entered the field, that 
the Imperial Government addressed a circular letter to all 
European Embassies, which was presented to both houses 
of the British Parliament, demanding the discontinuance of 
female schools and disallowing the attendance of Chinese 
women at religious services. 

Encouragement. — **In the spring of 1900 question blanks, 
making inquiries concerning many of the problems con- 
nected with the education of Chinese girls and women, 
were sent to every girls' school and Bible training school 
in the Empire. The returned blanks represented nearly 
every Province in China, twenty-two mission boards, and 
sixty-seven schools with an attendance of 2810 students. 
A large number of these were filled out by missionaries of 
long experience in China and intimate acquaintance with 
the people. One question was, *Do Chinese girls after 
being educated develop into strong women' ? All who 



1 



ENCOURAGEMENT, 75 

answered this question gave an affirmative reply, with one 
exception, and that a person who had been in the country 
so short a time she was unable to give a judgment. It was 
stated that after conversion a wonderful change is to be 
seen in the intellectual life. The girl or woman at once plans 
for the uplifting of her associates. Wives of pastors have 
filled the vacancy in their husbands' absence. In Canton 
a prize was offered for the best written exegesis on selected 
portions of Scripture, the competition being open to the 
women as well as all the Chinese helpers, and one of the 
graduates of a girls' school won the first prize."* 

Three Chinese women graduates of a medical school in 
America have the entire control of two hospitals, and are 
held in high esteem not only by the Chinese but by for- 
eigners who have confidence in their ability. These 
women are treating successfully thousands of patients 
annually. Beside intellectual development there is great 
improvement in character, christian education, bringing 
out an independence and stability wholly lacking in the 
lives of uneducated heathen. They are now beginning 
to exert a great influence, and take a stand against evil 
customs, such as foot binding, infanticide and the use of 
opium. Instances are given where girls refused to allow 
wine used at their wedding feast, another would not be 
married with heathen ceremonies, and these christian girls 
not only resist evil customs but bear with a beautiful spirit 
the jeers and persecutions of their heathen parents or 
friends. 

Their personal christian influence is often marked. Some 
have been instrumental in the conversion of their entire 
families and communities. 



*See paper of Mrs. Brockman, Y. M. C. A., in Woman's Work in the Far East, 
March, 1903. 



76 CHINA. 

These educated Chinese women make excellent mothers, 
training their children carefully and making model chris- 
tian homes. 

Educators are waking up to the fact that Chinese 
women are worthy of the name of woman, and have ability 
in many directions. The women of China are now finding 
vocations along the line of their special training and 
inclination. Out of the need of the people has grown a 
demand for woman physicians. A consecrated educated 
woman physician can come in closer touch with a sufferer 
and do more for mind and body than a foreigner. In 
many instances hospitals would have been closed had 
their been no native woman competent to step in and fill 
the breach. 

The women of Christendom owe a duty to the memory 
of the great company of Chinese mothers and beautiful 
maidens, who rather than deny their Lord, gave themselves 
over to the lusts of the pander and the mercies of the 
Boxer, and whose souls are *' under the altar." Rev, vi.^ p. 

With Dr. Chauncey Goodrich we may say — 

'' HALLELUJAH ! 
THE EMPIRE OF CHINA 
IS TO BE THE KINGDOM 
OF CHRIST. 

HALLELUJAH ! " 



WOMAN'S MEDICAL INSTITUTIONS FOR WOMEN. 

Under 30 Different Societies. 



Location 



Amoy (**Hope")-. 

Chefu 

Chentee 

Chinanfu 

Chinchow 

Chining Chow 

Chinkiang ... 

Chuwang 

Chenchow . 

Foochow 

Hangchow 

Hankow 

Hongkong 

Kien Ning 

Kiukiang 

Liaoyang . 

* Of these some 15 are 
Survey, pp. 196, 201. 



Location 



Ming Chiang 

(Foochow) 

Moukden 

Nanking 

Paoning-fu = . 

Peking 

Sam Kong 

(Canton) 

Shanghai 

Soochow 

Suichau-fu 

Tientsin 

Tsunhua 

Wei Hien 

Wuchang , 






memorial institutions. See Dennis Centennial 



ORPHANAGES, ETC. 

Amoy — Children's Home for sick and deformed. 

Canton — Girls' School founded by Mrs. B. C. Henry. 

Foochow— Mary E. Crook Memorial Orphanage and Boarding School. 

HuiGHUA— Rebecca Orphanage. 

Hong Kong — Berlin Foundling Asylum. 

Hangchow — Leper Hospital for Women and Cottage Home for untainted 

children. 
Nan King— Hussey Orphanage and Infirmary. 
Lo Ngwong — Felix R. Brunot Children's Home. 
Pakhai— Leper Asylum for Women and Children. 
Hong Kong — School for Blind Girls. 
Nu KiANG-FU— Hakka Children's Home. 

Amoy— Anti-Foot Binding Society, first organized 1874, membership 1000. 
Chingchow-fu — Shantung Anti-Foot Binding Society. 
Chung King — Natural Foot League. 
Foochow — Anti-Foot Binding Society. 

Shanghai — Natural Foot-Society organized 1894, many branches throughout 
Empire. 

LofC 



APPEAL OF TWO HUNDRED WOMEN : SHANGHAI 
GENERAL MISSIONARY CONFERENCE, 1890. 

TO ALL OUR HOME CHURCHES. 

Beloved sisters, if you could see their sordia misery, their hope- 
less, loveless lives, their ignorance and sinfulness, as we see 
them, mere human pity would move you to do something for their 
uplifting. But there is a stronger motive that should impel you to 
stretch out a helping hand, and thaty we plead — the constraining 
love of Christ. We, who are in the midst of this darkness that 
can be felt, send our voices across the ocean to you, our sisters, 
and beseech you by the grace of Christ our Saviour that you come 
at once to our help. 

Four kinds of work are open to us : 

1. There is school work connected with our various missions, 
which, in many cases, the men have handed over to the women, in 
order that they themselves may engage more directly in evangel- 
istic work. 

2. There is a work to be done for the sick and suffering women 
of China, in hospitals, dispensaries and homes, for which skillful 
physicians are needed. Most of this work can be better done by 
women than by men, and much of it can be done only by women. 

3. There is work for us in the families of the Church. There are 
converted mothers and daughters who need to be taught the way 
of the Lord more perfectly, and to be trained in whatever is nec- 
essary for their full development into lively members of the great 
\} ousehold of faith. 

4. There is a work of evangelization among women similar to 
iiiat being done by men among the people at large. It is not 
claimed that the evangelization of women cannot be done at 
all by men — but that there is more of it than men can do, there 
is much of it that never will be done unless women do it, and 
much that men cannot do as well as women can. There is noth- 
ing in this kind of work transcending the recognized scriptural 
sphere of women. Women received from the Lord Himselr upon 
the very morning of the resurrection their commission to tell the 
blessed story of a risen Saviour. What they did then we may 
continue to do now. 

But you will ask, "Who are needed for this work ? " Knowing 
the conditions of life and work, in China, we would answer that : 

I. They should be women of sound health, of good ability and 
good common sense, also well educated — though not necessarily of 
the highest education — apt to teach, kind and forbearing in disposi- 
tion, so that they may live and work harmoniously with their asso- 
ciates, and win the hearts of the Chinese. Above all, they should 
be women who have given themselves wholly to the Lord's work 



CHINA, 79 

and are willing to bear hardship and exercise constant self-denial 
for Christ's sake. 

2. It is desirable that they should pursue a systematic course of 
Bible study before coming to China, and have some experience in 
Christian work at home. 

Further, we would suggest that they should labor in connection 
with established missions in order that the good results of their 
v/ork may be preserved, and that they may have when needed, 
the assistance and protection of their brother missionaries. 

Open doors all around us, and though idolatry lifts a hoary 
he^ \ and ancestral worship binds the people as with chains of 
adamant, yet with God '' all things are possible," and mountains of 
difficulty melt like snowflakes before the rising of the Sun of 
P*N[-hteousness. 

Jod is on the side of His own glorious, life-giving Word; we 
ask you to come in the power of consecration and faith with 
sober expectations and readiness to endure hardness as good sol- 
diers of Jesus, and take your share in the most glorious war that 
was ever waged on earth — the war against the powers of darkness 
and sin, assured that God will accomplish His own purposes of 
love and grace to China, and will permit you, if you listen to this 
call, to be His fellow-workers in "binding up the broken-hearted, 
proclaiming liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison 
to them that are bound." 

That the holy and loving Spirit of God may incline your hearts 
to respond to His call, is our earnest prayer. 

Signed on behalf of the two hundred and four ladies assembled 
in Conference at Shanghai. 

Mrs. Mary Lees, London Mission Society. 

Mrs. A. Elwin, Church Mission Society. 

Miss C. M. Ricketts, English Presbyterian Mission. 

Mrs. J. R. Watson, English Baptist Mission. 

Miss L. S. Sugden, M. D. Wesleyan Mission. 

Vliss \. Newcombe, Church of England, Zenana Mission, 

V[rs. E. Tomalin, China Inland Mission. 

drs. John Ross, U. P. Church of Scotland. 

.virs. W. E. Soothill, United Methodist Free Church. 

Mrs. T, C. Fulton, Irish Presbyterian Church. 

Mrs. Arthur H. Smith, American Board. 

Mrs. J. M. Foster, Baptist Missionary Union. 

Mrs. C. W. Mateer, American Presbyterian Mission (North). 

Miss L. H. Hoag, M. D., Methodist Episcopal Mission (North), 

Miss E. F. Swinney, M. D., Seventh Day Baptist Mission. 

Mrs. Eliza M. Yates, Southern Baptist Mission. 

Miss Laura A. Haygood, Methodist Episcopal Mission (South). 

Miss K. M. Talmage, American Reformed Mission. 

Miss R. E. Reifsnyder, M. D., Woman's Union Mission. 

Mrs. J. L. Stuart, American Presbyterian Mission (South). 



OCT 30 1903 

INDEX. 



PAGE. 

Ancestor Worship , 24-69 

Antiquity of Chinese Civilization 12 

Appeal from Shanghai Conference 62 

Appeal from 200 Women 78-9 

"Boxer" Uprising 56 

Buddhism 23-70 

Chinese Empire, Extent of 3 

" " ** Compared with other Countries 5 

Christianity in China 33 

Confucianism 19-69 

*' Doctrines of 20-22 

" a Barrier to Christianity 22 

Converts to Christianity, Character of 35-43-75 

Comparative Population, Diagram of 6 

Comparative Area, Map showing 7 

Education and Literature . , 14 

Famine, Results of to Missions 48-50 

Feng Shui , 27-30 

History of China.. 11 

" " Compared with other History 12 

Language 46 

Roll of Martyred Missionaries 58 

Map of China 59 

Missions, Encouragement of the Work 50 

*' Difficulties in way of 51 

" Facilities for Work 45 

'* Genuineness of the Work 43 

" Results and Prospects of 57 

Modern Progress and Enterprise of the Chinese 15 

Population of China 8 

*' Compared with other Countries 9 

Punishments in China 31 

Religions of China Blended 18 

" Inefficiency of 30 

Riots.. 53 

Statistics of Missions 1900 60-61 

Taiping Rebellion, Effects of 47 

Taoism 23-71 

Treaty with China 34*35 

Water Communication over China 46 

Woman— Chinese at Home 67 

** Christian in China 67 

" Medical Statistics 11 

*' in Society *«. ♦ 68 

and Religion , ! M . : : 69-7 1 

Woman's Work, Encouragement 74 



BB 



Eminent Missionary Women 

By MRS. J. T. GRACEY. 



Of this book Miss Annie R. Butler, of England, writes 
in an English periodical : 

''Rarely is it one's good fortune to go through such a 
portrait gallery of the heroines of faith, hope and love as 
Mrs. Gracey has brought together in this volume. Each 
pen and ink sketch, as one studies and re-studies it, stands 
out with life-like clearness and beauty — a shining, stead- 
fast planet against the dark sky of heathendom. 

" Mrs. Gracey's power of condensation is beyond praise. 
Only those who have tried this kind of work can guess 
what the book must have cost her, though, indeed, anyone 
may see that it can have been no light task to seize the 
salient points of twenty-nine missionary lives and present 
them in readable and popular form within the limitations 
of 208 pages of bold, well-leaded type. 

" Nearly every one of Mrs. Gracey's characters occupied 
a separate vantage post against the enemy. We find them, 
thus, in Damascus, JafTa and Jerusalem ; in Abyssinia, 
Cairo, Liberia, and on the Zambesi ; in Foo Chow, Ningpo, 
and Shanghai ; in Amritsar, Bareilly, Calcutta, Mysore, 
Pithoragarh, and Serampore ; in Burmah and Ceylon ; in 
the Fijis, Greece, Greenland, Japan, Java, Kashmir, Mexico, 
the New Hebrides, Persia and Singapore. 

"The missionaries portrayed in these pages are as unlike 
in their special characteristics as are their several fields of 
labour. Each reflects her Lord on some special side — each 
has some distinctive beauty of her own, won from companion- 
ship with Him whom she so faithfully followed." 



** EMINENT MISSIONARY V^OMEN," 85 CENTS, MAY BE 
ORDERED OF J. T. GRACEY, I77 PEARL ST., ROCHESTER, N. Y. 





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